The British Government should take stock of the actual effect of the sanctions that are being applied against Iraq. My eyes were opened when I attended a talk given by Milan Rai on Friday, December 11 when he gave an account of his two humanitarian missions to hospitals in Iraq breaking the sanctions by distributing medical supplies. The evening included the showing of a 14-minute video put together by the Brudenhorf Community (a radical Christian group) that depicted a degree of chaos and suffering (especially among children, some 5,000 of whom die every month) that words cannot describe. To think of adding "bombing strikes" to this would justify the governments involved being referred to the proposed Permanent International War Crimes Tribunal.

It seems to me that there is no justification for any government, anywhere, to seek to make an impact upon an admittedly oppressive regime by actions which simply cause untold suffering to ordinary people and further entrench the hold of that regime on its people. History should have taught us that in the long run the only effective weapon against terrorism is diplomacy designed to remove the causes of the hatred which fuels it. Thank God for Kofi Annan.

W K Dewhurst

Wigan Road, Bolton

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.