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Today's Times of London (which carries Simon Jenkins' typically eloquent piece) also includes the following letter from Mr. Tony Benn. MP: British foreign policies 'immoral' >From Mr Tony Benn, MP for Chesterfield (Labour) Sir, The excellent reports in The Times about the tragedy in Turkey, the bombing of Iraq, and events in Kosovo, taken together, raise some fundamental humanitarian issues. While desperate efforts, with limited resources, were being made to dig out the survivors from the earthquake, house the homeless and avert the outbreak of disease, the Americans have got 200 aircraft, 19 warships and 22,000 troops in the area fighting a war against Iraq that has now gone on for almost a decade. And Britain, which also has one warship, 20 aircraft and 1,400 Service personnel in the same area, is spending over a million pounds a week, which is more than the total sum allocated by the Government, so far, to help the victims of the Turkish earthquake. The death toll in Turkey may rise to 40,000, which represents less than the number of children who, according to Unicef, are dying each year in Iraq as a direct result of the sanctions we impose. Meanwhile the damage which Nato aircraft inflicted on Yugoslavia also involved killing innocent people, some of whom were trapped in the buildings we bombed, and Serbs are now being ethnically cleansed by the KLA, an organisation which we have supported. Meanwhile the British arms trade is booming with weapons still going to Indonesia, and refugees who seek asylum here are to be treated even more harshly. I cannot recall any British government, in recent years, pursuing such unethical and immoral foreign and defence policies. Is this what "Third Way" politics is all about? Yours etc, TONY BENN, House of Commons. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a discussion list run by the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To be removed/added, email soc-casi-discuss-request@lists.cam.ac.uk, NOT the whole list. Please do not sent emails with attached files to the list *** Archived at http://linux.clare.cam.ac.uk/~saw27/casi/discuss.html ***