Forum 2000 announces guests

This year’s Forum 2000 debate will be attended by Cuban dissident José Luis García Paneque and Iranian lawyer and 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, the organisers have announced. Opposition activist García Paneque was released from prison this summer after seven years in prison, 17 months of which he spent in solitary confinement. He accepted an offer of asylum in Spain in July. Ms Ebadi will be visiting the forum for the second time; she first came to the Czech capital in 1997. The conference, now in its 14th year under the auspices of ex-president Václav Havel, will take place between October 10 and 12 under the slogan "The World We Want to Live In".