Letters: Nuclear proliferation

Hypocrisy of threatening Iran in the face of a nuclear-armed Israel

Sir: Johann Hari (Opinion, 22 October) argues that "to go to war to uphold the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty would be a sick joke, when the world's leaders are all blatantly burning it themselves". Sicker by far is the Western world's hypocrisy in threatening Iran, having for nearly half a century either ignored or encouraged Israel's development of nuclear weapons.

In 1969, when it became apparent that the Israelis had obtained a nuclear capability and had no intention of signing the NPT, President Richard Nixon's Defence Secretary, Melvin Laird, warned that such "developments were not in the US interests and should, if at all possible, be stopped". As it happened, the Americans had an ideal lever to use against Israel, a forthcoming sale of F-4 Phantom jets. A memorandum for Nixon made clear: "The issue is whether we are prepared to imply – and to carry out if necessary – the threat not to deliver the Phantoms if Israel does not comply with our request."

Yet during the summer of 1969, Nixon and Henry Kissinger, then his national security adviser, decided not to use this leverage, and their administration's only feeble protest was to refuse an Israeli request to deliver the jets a month early.

What could explain the contrast between this supine policy and today's bellicose rhetoric. The historian of Israel's nuclear programme, Avner Cohen, writing last year in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, suggests that Golda Meir, then the Israeli Prime Minister, "may have assured Nixon that Israel thought of nuclear weapons as a last-resort option, a way to provide her Holocaust-haunted nation with a psychological sense of existential deterrence".

Should a self-interested version of 1940s history be allowed to dictate the nuclear power politics of the 21st century, with potentially disastrous consequences?

Peter Rushton

Stockport, Cheshire

Impact on African farmers ignored

Sir: As an expatriate Kiwi living in outer London, I am sometimes amazed at the incredibly narrow view of the wider world often taken here by so-called "authorities". The Soil Association's view about air miles ("African produce to lose organic labelling", reprt, 25 October) ignores important factors well beyond the impact their definitions of "organic" may have on poor African farmers.

The British farmer is one of the major recipients of welfare in the UK, delivered in the form of subsidies. These subsidies are not as high as those paid to farmers across the EU, but they still represent a huge collective payment that must come from the UK taxpayer, which, of course, translates as a lower standard of living for not only the UK taxpayer but for the producers of food outside the UK and Europe who are competing to put food on the UK table.

For 20 years, food (and wine) producers in Australia and New Zealand have done without any subsidy or even tax breaks on their produce, but they still manage to sell to UK markets less expensively than their UK farming competitors.

If those highly efficient growers and processors are to be denied access to the UK's premium organic market because of a narrow and dubious set of "ethics", perhaps the Soil Association could analyse the carbon footprint of farm subsidies to the UK farmer and include the results in their ethical equation.

It is fashionable for UK politicians and pop stars to vigorously shake the begging bowl for Africa, but vitally important access to the organic market that allows African food producers to lift their returns beyond subsistence level will be denied them by the Soil Association on the grounds of "ethics".

Air freight is a small but undeniable factor in the equation of global warming. I suggest other factors may have more importance when attempting to behave ethically.

Colin Kendall

Isleworth, Hounslow

Sir: The World Wildlife Fund UK welcomes the nuanced position taken by the Soil Association on air freight of organic produce.

We congratulate the Soil Association on the decision to phase out air freight in a sensitive way by finding alternative markets that are as good for the grower and better for the planet.

In the interim, we believe it is a sensible approach for the Soil Association to require that any greenhouse gas emissions from air-freighting organic food are fair or ethical trade. This is likely to improve the contribution of this trade to reducing poverty.

WWF-UK is very pleased that the Soil Association is widening the discussion to the important issue of the environmental impacts of growing the products, such as water use. In this context, we are delighted to have helped the Soil Association to set standards for responsible water use on farms.

Richard Perkins

Senior Agricultural Policy Adviser, WWF-UK, Godalming, Surrey

Turkey resists US carve-up of Iraq

Sir: The decision of the Turkish parliament to authorise troops to cross into Iraq cannot be separated from the passing of the resolution by the US Senate to support the division of Iraq along ethnic lines into three separate regions under a limited central government.

The non-binding resolution passed on 26 September and supported by the Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, would effectively create an oil-rich autonomous Kurdish state on Turkey's border, strengthening the campaign for a wider Kurdistan.

Despite the assurances President George Bush made to Turkey before the 2003 invasion, this separation of Iraq was always anticipated by the Americans and was even set out in Iraq's interim constitution, whose drafting was heavily influenced by the US.

Over the years, Turkey has conducted 24 cross-border operations against the PKK in Iraq and the killing of Turkish soldiers is nothing new. Indeed, in the first six months of this year alone, 111 members of the Turkish security forces were killed.

What is new is the Turkish determination to prevent the US from pushing through with the latest stage of their plan to carve up Iraq, combined with a resurgence of Kurdish nationalism buoyed by a genuine possibility of nationhood.

Stefan Simanowitz

Brighton

The stark reality of asylum appeals

Sir: Lin Homer's letter (23 October) claiming that "asylum claims are considered by trained caseworkers, and claimants have access to legal support during initial consideration and while appealing to the independent judicial authorities if they are unsuccessful" is somewhat disingenuous. What she fails to reveal is that legal support is subject to a strict merits test – the lawyer must be satisfied that the claim has at least a 50 per cent chance of success – and that most asylum claims are refused.

Our research into the government's "Fast Track" system of processing asylum claims (claims deemed to be "straightforward" are given an initial decision within three days during which people can be detained while their asylum claims are being decided) shows that just 1 per cent of claimants are granted asylum, that the system is too fast to be fair because it does not allow people time to disclose traumatic experiences, or to prepare properly for their appeals by gathering expert reports or medical information, and that many asylum-seekers (from a third to two-thirds in our sample) are unrepresented at appeal.

Between May 2005 and the beginning of September 2006, 345 cases were heard at the Yarl's Wood Asylum and Immigration Tribunal, the court linked to the detention centre. At appeal, 26 per cent of women did not have any legal representation.

And people can spend long periods in detention once their case has been turned down: six women former detainees interviewed by BID for the second phase of our research had spent on average more than five months in detention, with one woman deprived of her liberty for 11 months.

Celia Clarke

Director, Bail for Immigration Detainees, London E1

Lockdown at lunchtimes

Sir: Your correspondent Tony Cullingworth (18 October) seems to think that there's something unthinkable about preventing pupils from leaving school premises during lunchtime, to prevent them filling up with junk food. I can't imagine why they are permitted to leave at all.

In my day (the 1970s), we were not allowed to leave school at lunchtime. We weren't forced to eat the food provided, but since it was either that or starve, we mainly ate it. I'm now 50, 5'10" and weigh 10st 9lb. I wonder what I'd weigh if I'd been allowed to go to the chip shop instead.

Edward Collier

Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

Activists blamedin badger debate

Sir: What a load of hypocrites ("Activists voice dismay at plan to cull badgers", report, 23 October). These are the very people who sabotaged the Independent Scientific Group's trial by wrecking traps and releasing and relocating badgers.

Consequently, since too few badgers were culled over far too long a period, the £34m trial was seriously flawed and the conclusions wrong. But the trial, for all its limitations, proved that badgers do transmit TB to cattle.

Not only are thousands of healthy cattle that fail their TB test being compulsorily slaughtered every month, but thousands of badgers are also suffering TB; they die within months from starvation. This level of suffering is condoned by the RSPCA when they claim that disease in wildlife is all part of evolution, and no action should be taken. Surely, it is a policy abhorrent to all who are genuinely concerned for the wellbeing of wildlife?

It is critical that there is a cull of infected badgers, not only for the benefit of cattle but the badger population too.

D J B Denny MRCVS

Broadwas on Teme, Worcester

Sir: There is an urgent need for the Independent Scientific Group to reach an evidence-based policy decision on badger-culling, which may avoid a wholesale slaughter. Sentimentality should not be allowed to cloud lucid, scientifically based debate, but there are significant flaws in any pro-culling argument. It is also a mystery why possible immunisation of cattle or badgers has not been championed instead.

Other potential disease vectors need to be examined. Cattle may be housed at high densities, so the likelihood of aerosol contamination between coughing cows must be greater than any risk of badger-to-cow transmission. Cud-chewing spreads saliva and increases the possibility of other nearby animals ingesting and inhaling droplets containing the causative Mycobacterium bovis bacterium. The overuse of antibiotics affecting physiology and natural immunity must also be taken into account when examining epidemiology in cattle.

If culling is allowed, the removal of territory-holding dominant boar badgers will make way for weaker males that would otherwise have needed to compete for that territory by fighting. Territorial extension will then occur as a depleted population fills any gaps, therefore increasing the potential range of TB by infected badgers. Without interference, badgers would automatically self-limit their populations according to available territory and food supply.

There is no justification for killing badgers in areas unaffected by bovine TB.

David Element

London SW19

Briefly...

Asparagus tip

Sir: In my local shop, I was surprised to see a sign stating, "British Asparagus". I thought the season was long over, so I had a closer look. The first label said the item had been packed in Kent. Peering more closely, I spotted a tiny label that read, "Product of Peru". I replaced the pack with a regretful sigh.

Harriet Connides

London N2

Patently obvious

Sir: David Prosser's report "Astrazeneca loses patent on asthma drug" and Jeremy Warner's article "Generics raise pressure on Big Pharma" (19 October) claim that the European patent office's decision to revoke the patent for Symbicort (Astrazeneca's asthma drug) will not have an immediate impact in the EU. That is incorrect. Astrazeneca will lose five years of market exclusivity because Symbicort's original expiry for patent in Europe was 2015. Companies' incentive to invest in new drugs will decrease as they become unable to reap the rewards.

Sukanya Natarajan

Research Officer, Intellectual Property and Competition, London N18

Watchdog bites back

Sir: You suggest in your article "Under-resourced watchdog swamped by complaints" (19 October) that there is a deliberate strategy to starve the ICO of funding and cause delay in complaint processing. The Government remains committed to Freedom of Information, to making it work and promoting its benefits to the public. We have, in fact, agreed to provide an additional £350,000 in funding this year. But all areas of public service need to find ways to work better within their budgets.

Michael Wills MP

Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, London sw1

Rules of Nobel

Sir: It is fashionable for feminists to claim that Rosalind Franklin was denied a Nobel Prize because of sexist bias (Letters, 25 October).The reality is far more straightforward: she was not even considered for the prize simply because she was dead. Nobels are awarded only to the living. But male scientists have been "robbed" of Nobels while still alive, and Albert Schatz (medicine) and Sir Fred Hoyle (physics) immediately come to mind. Nobel committees are influenced by all kinds of socio-political factors, but there is no evidence to suggest that female scientists have been wrongly denied the prize more often than have male scientists.

Dr Milton Wainwright

University of Sheffield

Unfair to simians

Sir: I write on behalf of India's simian population to protest at your damaging headline "Invasion of the killer monkeys" (report, 24 October). Just one unfortunate man has died, by accident, falling off his balcony while shaking a stick at visiting monkeys. Otherwise, you accuse monkeys of biting (so do dogs, rabbits and horses when provoked), pinching (so do Italian men) and trashing papers in a government office (who hasn't wished to do the same?). India's simians are due an unreserved apology.

Rodney Burbeck

London SW14