TONY BLAIR, MIDDLE EAST ENVOY - Part 1 - 15th February 2009
George Negus interviews former British Prime Minister Tony Blair about
life after politics.Since he left Number 10 Downing Street, Mr Blair
has been heavily involved in efforts to broker peace in the Middle
East. But some are wondering what effect Mr Blair's support of the Iraq
War will have on his ability to negotiate effectively in the
super-heated Israel/Palestinian arena. And as the UK slips deeper into
economic crisis, what does the former Prime Minister have to say about
his legacy in Britain? With the boom times over, does he accept any
responsibility for the UK's current state?
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TONY BLAIR, MIDDLE EAST ENVOY - Part 2 - 22nd February 2009
Last week on our program from chilly London you actually got to see
only half of the extended chat George Negus had with Tony Blair, in of
all places, Jerusalem, where these days he spends a fair bit of time in
his role as Special Envoy for the Quartet - the US, the UN, the EU and
Russia. Back in May 2007, when under fire for his questionable stance
on Iraq, Tony Blair pulled the plug on his 10 years as UK prime
minister. Here's what he had to say.
TONY BLAIR: I give my thanks to you, the British people, for the times
that I've succeeded, and my apologies to you for the times I've fallen
short. But good luck.
Since then he's famously converted to Catholicism and has his new
peace-making role in the Middle East conflict. When we talked in the
Holy City of the so-called three great religions, Christianity, Judaism
and Islam - he and George Negus engaged, as it were, on the messy mix
of politics and religion.
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JIM ROGERS INTERVIEW – 1st March 2009
When US financier and Wall St veteran Jim Rogers speaks, the investment
community tends to listen. And if they've been listening lately to the
Singapore-based former business partner of George Soros, the news is
not good. He's no friend of Gordon Brown since declaring that Britain
is "finished" and he says around the world "politicians are making it
worse not better" by meddling with the bad banks.
"Let them go bankrupt and clean out the system," he says.
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DAVID KILCULLEN – 8th March 2009
David Kilcullen is a former Australian soldier and peacekeeper and one
of the world's foremost experts on guerrilla warfare. He has served in
every theatre of the 'War on Terror' since 9/11 as special advisor for
counterinsurgency to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a senior
counterinsurgency advisor to General David Petraeus in Iraq. Kilcullen
has compared the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan to the
Vietnam war, calling it a crisis on the brink of failure - that the war
is "still winnable, but only just".
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Please Note: More interviews will be added as time permits.