Radio Farda Launches New ‘Viewpoints’ Program

(Prague, Czech Republic — April 5, 2006) Radio Farda this week launched a new weekly program to bring listeners in Iran news and insight from famous Iranians — scholars and thinkers, former politicians and current opinion leaders, living in exile.

“Viewpoints” is a 12-minute conversation that follows the news every Tuesday at 6:00PM Iranian time (10:30AM EDT) that aired for the first time yesterday. The inaugural “Viewpoints” program featured an interview with former Minister of Culture Ata Ollah Mohajerani.

Mohajerani, who now lives in London and spoke by phone to Radio Farda, served in the government of former Iranian president Hojatoleslam Mohammad Khatami. Asked whether a confrontation between Islam and the West is inevitable, Mohajerani said confrontation is possible between radical extremists on both sides, but the focus should be on the larger bloc of moderate centrists who are working hard in the East and the West to avoid a clash.

The featured speaker on next week’s “Viewpoints,” with a different perspective, will be well-known secular Iranian writer and intellectual Bijan Hekmat, who left Iran six years ago and now lives in Paris.

Radio Farda, a joint project of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and Voice of America (VOA), is a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week service. Produced in Washington and Prague and transmitted to listeners via AM, shortwave and satellite and Internet, it features at least 8 hours of news and current affairs programming daily as well as Western and Persian music aimed at a younger audience. Radio Farda programming is also available via the Internet, at the service’s website www.radiofarda.com and at www.rferl.org; English-language news about events in Iran can also be found on the RFE/RL website. To learn more about Radio Farda and its coverage of events in Iran, read and subscribe to “Focus on Farda”.