Letter: Aid for arms deals is immoral

IT IS A sad reflection on the state of morality when it can be said that 'we may need to live with bribery' because of the importance to our economy of a trade which is nothing more or less than a trade in death: the arms trade ('The flight from hypocrisy', 20 February).

In supplying arms to Third World economies that can ill afford them, we become dealers in death, instrumental in the destruction of millions of lives in little-known places where our arms are used to suppress, or repress those who dare to ask for something approaching a reasonable standard of living. In tying our supply of arms to aid programmes we reveal ourselves to be without scruple. This is not a matter of simply 'living with bribery' but is an outrageous immorality - a case of real sleaze in the true, dictionary definition of the word: 'low moral standards'.

Caroline Robertson

Church Crookham, Hampshire