Sir, - Without wishing to become a regular columnist on Iraq, I'm afraid I have to respond to the misapprehension in Niall Andrews's letter of August 7th.
I have never doubted Dr Van Sponeck's integrity. Nor did I do so in my letter. My point is that Saddam Hussein exploits all of us who are liberal Western democrats. He knows that our moral standards will drive us to do what we can to alleviate the suffering of the Iraqi people. His own lack of morality allows him to use those innocents in the most evil and cynical way imaginable.
We must not allow Saddam to exploit our morality to force us into lifting sanctions. He wants us to do this so that he will be free to develop weapons of mass destruction. We know him to be capable of using such weapons - he did so against the Kurds. The result will be that the region will be in peril. And many of the Iraqi people (especially the Kurds and Shias) will be no better off.
Britain will continue to seek ways to help ordinary Iraqi citizens. But we cannot accept that giving in to a tyrant whose record of human rights abuses defies most people's imagination is the right thing to do. - Yours, etc.,
Sir Ivor Roberts, British Ambassador, Merrion Road, Dublin 4.