Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to a well-known Chinese dissident would run contrary to the principles of its founder, China's Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.

Czech dissident Vaclav Havel has called on the Nobel Peace Committee to award the prize to jailed Chinese human rights campaigner Liu Xiaobo.

But Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said that would send the wrong message.

"This person was sentenced to jail because he violated Chinese law," Jiang told a news briefing in Beijing.

"His actions are diametrically opposed to the aims of the Nobel prize. Mr. Nobel's behest was that the Nobel Peace Prize be awarded to somebody who promoted peace between peoples, promoted international friendship and disarmament."

Liu is serving an 11-year prison sentence for writings that called for multi-party democracy -- perceived threats to the Communist Party's monopoly on power.

The head of the Norwegian Nobel Institute said on Monday that a senior Chinese official told him that awarding the peace prize to Liu would affect relations between Oslo and Beijing.

Beijing was furious when Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, won the Peace Prize in 1989, the year of the Tiananmen Square crackdown by Chinese authorities on protesters.

China and Norway are now engaged in talks over a bilateral trade deal, which some say could serve as a blueprint for an agreement between the Asian superpower and the European Union.

Energy-rich Norway is also keen to export its offshore exploration know-how to China, with Norwegian oil firm Statoil announcing last month it aimed to look for shale gas in China.

Norway's Nobel committee is set to announce the winner of this year's peace prize in Oslo on Oct. 8, capping a week of prizes given in Stockholm in the name of 19th century Swedish dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel.

(Source: Reuters)