Letter: Sudan `nerve gas'

Sir: That majority which voted Labour must know that in opposition that party would have denounced approval of American attacks on Sudan and Afghanistan as toadyism, while pointing out that as well as needlessly endangering UK interests and nationals abroad, it undermines the UN.

In a world with no counterbalancing superpower, it seems bizarre and dangerous to encourage the tit-for-tat behaviour of pre-UN times, as if this century's world wars had taught us nothing. How many days before other powers ape this regression?

It is up to our leaders to make the UN work, and the time to support US actions will be when the US ceases to ignore it by acting without due process, ceases to use it as a tool, pays its subscriptions, and obliges its Israeli clients to abide by its resolutions. Were it to do so there would be enormously less terrorism in the Arab world. The alternative is for world politics to continue to follow the plot of some ridiculous Hollywood film, directed from the White House in the intervals between deviant sexual acts.

NICHOLAS du QUESNE BIRD

Bath