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Question Time
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Question Time: meet the panel
On 24 April Question Time was broadcast from Abu Dhabi. The special edition allowed the people of the country to put their questions to a panel about the present situation in Iraq. The panel included the following guests.


Geoff Hoon
Geoff Hoon is considered to be one of Tony Blair's most trusted colleagues and has risen rapidly through the ranks since he became the MP for Ashfield in Nottinghamshire in 1992. He was appointed Secretary of State for Defence in 1999.

Mr Hoon recently said that the failure by Iraq to use weapons of mass destruction in the current war did not mean the country did not possess them.

He said: "Not only did we have the information originally about the weapons the regime were making but we also had a wealth of information about the efforts they were making in the course of UN inspections to dismantle, to hide and to deceive inspectors."


Michael Howard
The Rt Hon Michael Howard is shadow chancellor of the exchequer and former home secretary.

Mr Howard was elected as the MP for Folkestone and Hyde in 1983. His long ministerial career reached its zenith in John Major's government when he served as Home Secretary from 1993 to 1997. He failed in his bid to become leader of the Conservative Party when John Major resigned in 1997, but he joined William Hague's shadow cabinet.

Mr Howard is well known for his pro-American and eurosceptic views.


Benazir Bhutto
Benazir Bhutto is the former Prime Minister of Pakistan. She was born in 1953 and educated at Harvard and Oxford. She is the daughter of former Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and is the leader of the Pakistani People's Party (PPP).

Although reluctant to become involved in politics, she became the first woman to head the government of an Islamic State and was twice elected prime minister, from 1988 to 1990, and from 1993 to 1996. On both occasions she was ousted from office for alleged corruption and has lived in exile since 1999.

Her hopes to return to her home country and restart her political career were dented in 2002 when she failed to secure a nomination in the country's general elections. Her candidacy was rejected on the grounds that she had failed to appear in court to answer corruption charges.


James Rubin
James Rubin was US Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs from 1997 to 2000 under President Clinton. He worked for the Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who also appointed him the department's chief spokesman.

His role included assisting Madeleine Albright in formulating and presenting US policy at the United Nations and advising her on national security in her role in President Clinton's cabinet and on the National Security Council.

In 1998 Mr Rubin married CNN's chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour. They have one son and currently live in London.


Rami Khouri
Rami Khouri is the executive editor of the Beirut-based, English-language newspaper the Daily Star, which is widely distributed throughout the Middle East. Mr Khouri is a Palestinian-Jordanian and US citizen. For seven years he was editor-in-chief of the Jordan Times.

An internationally syndicated political columnist and book author, in recent years he also hosted a weekly current affairs talk show on Jordan Television and an archaeology programme on Radio Jordan.

Speaking recently about the prospects for democracy in the Arab world, he said: "I think the transition comes with time. It comes with emergence of a middle class, it comes with prosperity."


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