Wesley Clark

Sir David Frost

Every week, Sir David Frost, one of the most celebrated broadcasters, offers you a programme which takes its stories and guests from every part of the globe.

 

The world’s news makers will be interviewed with Sir David’s incisive style.

 

Sir David will get behind the headlines and examine the decisions and policies which shape global politics today.

 

 

Coming up this week on Frost over the World:

 

Wesley Clark tells Sir David why he decided not to run for the Democratic nomination

With just two months until the US primaries the latest opinion polls suggest that Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Rudy Giuliani are the two candidates most likely to meet in next year’s presidential election.

 

Wesley Clark, the former Nato supreme allied commander who ran for the Democratic nomination in 2004, talks to Sir David about why he is supporting Hillary Clinton this time around.

 

He also reveals why he believes the US occupation of Iraq goes against US values and is part of the “Wolfowitz-Cheney grand strategy for reshaping the Middle East”.

 

Clark goes on to describe his fear that the current US administration wants to strike Iran, his belief that the US must adopt a policy of engagement with Iran before it is too late and claims that “Saddam was the cork in the bottle that held back Iranian power”.

 

 

 

Khader mediated in talks between the Danish government and Muslims

Parliamentary elections will take place in Denmark next week. The Liberal-Conservative coalition, which has been in power since 2001, is expected to perform well. But a new centre-right party, the New Alliance Party, could complicate coalition arithmetic since its leader has, as yet, refused to commit himself to backing either the prime minister or the Social Democratic opposition.

 

Naser Khader, the leader of the New Alliance, joins the show from Copenhagen and tells Sir David why he is holding back on making his decision.

Khader, who calls himself a secular Muslim, also reflects upon what he considers to be the positive results of the Danish cartoon controversy and his desire to show that it is possible to be both Muslim and democratic.

 

 

Farzana Shaikh tells Sir David that Bhutto must be seen to be taking a tough stance

With Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto placed under effective house arrest on Friday, Sir David asks Farzana Shaikh, a Pakistan analyst at Chatham House, whether this is the end of the so-called power-sharing agreement between Bhutto and Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president.

 

Shaikh explains that the US and the UK had spent months working on the agreement in order to provide some kind of political consensus to underpin Pakistan’s role in the controversial ‘war on terror’ but that the agreement was always in doubt.

 

Bhutto, Shaikh says, must be seen to be taking a tough stance because not to do so would be to commit political suicide. However, by calling on Musharraf to fulfill his side of the bargain she has avoided completely closing the door to negotiations.

 

Sir David asks Shaikh if Musharraf is more or less powerful since he declared a state of emergency in the country.

 

 

 

Elton says intellect is being sidelined to faith and feelings

He is a director, the writer of BBC television hits The Young Ones and Blackadder and the creator of two West End musicals and the international hit We Will Rock You.

 

Comedian and best-selling novelist Ben Elton has also just finished his sell-out Get a Grip stand-up comedy tour. He joins Sir David to discuss his latest novel, Blind Faith, and the bleak view of a future society in which privacy has disappeared that it presents.

 

Elton talks about how, in a culture obsessed with talking about itself, we are giving away our privacy, sacrificing intellectual vigour in favour of feelings and faith and celebrating dysfunction.

 

Watch Sir David’s interview with Ben Elton

Karen AbuZayd

Karen AbuZayd joins the show from New York

The Middle East conference in Annapolis has not yet got a confirmed date but the predictions of failure are already mounting.

 

Karen AbuZayd, the commissioner-general of the UN Relief and Works Agency, tells Sir David what Palestinian refugees will be looking for from the conference and discusses whether the conference is simply another opportunity for a photo call.

 

AbuZayd, who lives in Gaza, describes the worsening daily hardships faced by the people there and reflects upon whether the Quartet is failing the Palestinian people and if the UN should, in fact, leave the Quartet.

 

 

Linda Yeuh is an economist from Oxford University

Linda Yeuh, an economist from Oxford University, joins Sir David to discuss the world-wide financial jitters that have followed the plunging US dollar and so-called credit crunch and resulted in the scalps of the bosses of two of the world’s largest financial institutions.

 

Yeuh explains exactly what is going on and offers her predictions on how long the situation will last.

 

Sir David asks if this is the end of the road for the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and Yeuh reveals the currency that she feels may take its place.

 

 

 

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