Letter: Timor challenge

Sir: While hundreds are killed and an estimated 150,000 people are "displaced" in East Timor, it is salutary to recall Tony Blair's recent words: "It is not wrong to help some people [the Kosovars] just because we can't help everyone [the East Timorese]".

However, British weapons and torture manufacturers should stop arming the Indonesian military and police forces. Why does Mr Blair not condemn the murderous militias, aided and abetted by the Indonesian military and police forces, with the same fervour as he condemned the Serbian brutality in Kosovo earlier this year?

The West's response, or rather lack thereof, to East Timor's calamity blows the "humanitarian" pretext for our disastrous intervention in Kosovo.