Benazir Bhutto

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:

 

 

Benazir Bhutto joins the show from Dubai where she lives in exile

More than 100 people have died in violence across Pakistan since Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, suspended the country’s chief-justice in March.

 

Last week Nawaz Sharif, the two-time former Pakistani prime minister, joined Frost Over The World to discuss the situation in the country and his alliance with his former rival, also a two-time prime minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto.

 

This week Benazir Bhutto joins the show from Dubai, where she lives in exile and she begins by telling Sir David Frost of her plans to return to Pakistan later in the year and her hopes that she and Sharif will be allowed to participate in general elections scheduled for 2007.

 

Read the interview

Read the full interview with Benazir Bhutto.

She tells Sir David Frost that if their participation is not permitted the elections will not be credible and that it is important for moderate forces to unite to undermine religious militancy and extremism in the country.

 

 

Mo Ibrahim wants to put the money he made in Africa back into the continent

Mo Ibrahim has his own vision for Africa. He is a successful businessman who has launched a new foundation and a prize dedicated to promoting good governance in Africa.

 

The prize – the biggest in the world – is worth over $5million and will be awarded to former heads of state in Africa who ruled well and have left office.

 

He tells Sir David Frost the purpose of the prize and insists that all of the money put into Africa will have no effect without good governance.

 

The prize will be awarded based upon an index of good governance – the president who succeeds in moving his country’s index furthest each year will be given the prize.

 

As well as promoting good governance, the prize is a way of enabling successful ex-presidents to continue contributing after they have left office. While former leaders of Western nations have a financially sound future as after-dinner speakers and on the board of big companies, Ibrahim explains that until now there have been few options for African leaders upon leaving office.

 

 

Sam Kutesa, the Ugandan foreign minister

Uganda is due to host a meeting of the Commonwealth Heads of Government but a civil war in the north of the country coupled with rumours of an emerging corruption have led to growing concerns and speculation that the meeting may be moved to another location.

 

Sam Kutesa, the Ugandan foreign minister, joins Sir David Frost to discuss the rumours, that he says were started by Ugandan opposition groups, and insists that there is no possibility of the meeting being moved.

 

He also talks about the civil war with the Lord’s Resistance Army and insists that the war is now over and the LRA defeated.

 

 

Jon Holmes, author of Status Quo and the Kangaroo

Comedy writer Jon Holmes joins the show to discuss his new book: Status Quo and the Kangaroo.

 

It is a compilation of stories about the antics of rock stars; an attempt to compile all of those tales that are passed around but never actually written down.

 

When Holmes decided it was about time that there was a book of these stories he set about researching some of the old classics and searching for some newer additions.

 

The stories may not be entirely accurate, he explains, but their truthfulness or otherwise is left for the reader to decide.

 

He tells Sir David some of his favourite stories from the book, including the one that provided the inspiration for the title and, having stuck strictly to musicians in this book, reveals his plans to expand into other fields.

 

 

Ishmael Beah was forcibly recruited into the Sierra Leone army when he was 13

When a brutal civil war engulfed Sierra Leone in 1991 children were literally caught up in it – not simply as passive victims but as child soldiers.

 

Ishmael Beah was a child soldier and he joins the show to discuss his memoir, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, which has just been published.

 

He was forcibly recruited by the Sierra Leone army – during the war groups of soldiers from the army started to behave in the same way as the rebels – when he was 13 years old. His mother, father and two brothers had already been killed.

 

He talks about his experiences during the war, including becoming completely desensitised, watching his friends die and eventually being sent to a rehabilitation centre established by Unicef for child soldiers.

 

 

Author and filmmaker John Pilger but the story of the Chagos Islands under the spotlight

Last week the British government lost an appeal in its fight to keep natives of the Chagos Islands from returning to their homes more than 30 years after they were ejected by the British government to make way for a US navy base.

 

The base, on the largest island Diego Garcia, has been used to launch attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq.

 

John Pilger, a veteran filmmaker and journalist, put the story of the Chagos Islands under the spotlight with his documentary Stealing a Nation and his new book, Freedom Next Time.

 

He joins the show to explain exactly what happened to the Chagos islanders, how the conspiracy was revealed and what this latest decision means.

 

 

 

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