SIR: So Tony Blair has deplored Indian nuclear tests! Another example of Orwellian doublethink. For he believes that Britain should keep Trident and has even gone on record as saying that he would be willing to press the button. He does not appear to see that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

Only those who believe it is wrong for any country to have nuclear weapons, including, of course, our own, have any answer to India's arguments. They can say that it is wrong for you because it is wrong for us. Among world statesmen perhaps only Nelson Mandela could say this, for South Africa has renounced nuclear weapons and destroyed its existing stock.

In the 40 years I have been campaigning against nuclear weapons, I have,? of course, heard ad nauseam the argument that nuclear weapons were a deterrent whose role was to prevent war. So, presumably, the world would become a really safe place only when every country had them. But only one strategist showed he really believed in the theory by arguing this (I think his name was Gaullois). For the rest, it was merely cold war propaganda: somehow the USA in 1962 insisted on regarding the Soviet missiles in Cuba not as a deterrent but as a threat.

Malcolm Pittock

St James's Avenue

Breightmet

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