Heard in Iran This Week
on Radio Farda
(Prague, Czech Republic -- July 13, 2006) Major topics addressed on Radio Farda this week included the ongoing nuclear crisis, an exclusive interview with popular Iranian rock star Dariush Egbali on the problems of Iranian refugees in the West, and a Radio Farda scoop with the fired coach of Iran's national soccer team.
>> A Radio Farda correspondent was in Madrid for the July 6 meeting between Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana. He covered the visit of the Iranian delegation and reported live from a press conference after the talks. Larijani called the meeting "very fruitful," while Solana's office said a "good start" had been made in resolving the standoff over Iran's nuclear enrichment program. As part of its regular, daily programming on the nuclear controversy, Radio Farda gave broad coverage July 12 to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's comments in Paris before talks with foreign ministers from the 6 countries that had offered Iran a package of incentives to give up its enrichment program. Rice said Iran's response is "disappointing and incomplete," and that the time had come for Iran to declare its decision on the package.
>> Radio Farda's weekly "Fresh Look" youth program on July 9 was devoted to the problems of Iranian refugees in the West and practical considerations for young people thinking about leaving Iran. A correspondent for Radio Farda in Tehran interviewed a young mother, who said she and her little boy became refugees in the Netherlands. She said her main reason for leaving Iran was the lack of personal and political freedom and that she had returned very reluctantly, only after failing to get political asylum in Holland. The program continued with interviews with successful Iranian refugees living in Sweden and Germany, as well as an interview with an Iranian in Beijing who had ended up there after being refused permission to live in Canada. Radio Farda closed the program with a conversation with pop idol Dariush Egbali, who left Iran 27 years ago and now lives in Los Angeles. In addition to being a famous singer, he is an activist for refugee rights. Egbali cautioned young Iranians wanting to live elsewhere about the many difficulties they would encounter, not least because of tightening immigration rules in Europe and other countries in the world.
>> Ivanko Brankovic, the Croatian coach of Iran's national soccer team for the past five years, was hot news in Iran after he was fired because of the team's miserable showing at the World Cup. Radio Farda was the first to get an exclusive interview with Brankovic, which it broadcast into Iran on July 4. Brankovic blamed the team's early defeat on four players he said were working against him. Many listeners called in to comment on the interview, which was excerpted and quoted in Iran's biggest daily newspaper, Hamshahri (http://www.hamshahri.net).
For more on these and other stories about Iran, please visit:
http://www.radiofarda.com -- Radio Farda's Persian-language website
http://www.rferl.org/reviews/farda.aspx -- "Focus on Farda" bi-weekly review
http://www.rferl.org/reports/iran-report/default.asp -- "RFE/RL Iran Report" weekly analysis
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarchive/country/iran.html -- RFE/RL English-language coverage of Iran
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