Madam, - Last week the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, was pictured in The Irish Times laying a wreath at the grave of the quintessential pacifist, Mahatma Gandhi, while on a visit to India selling arms and weapons of mass destruction. Simultaneously, his government decreed that the elected president of its neighbour, Palestine, is to be exiled and, perhaps, assassinated in due course.
This week marks the 21st anniversary of the Sharon-led invasion of Beirut's Palestinian refugee camps where hundreds of innocent civilians were killed, raped and wounded. Ariel Sharon has been indicted in Belgium for these war crimes but so far remains immune from justice.
This man governs a state that has flouted over 100 UN resolutions on occupation, banishment, torture, assassinations, reparations and expropriation among a legion of criminal acts carried out since its foundation. This man also has his finger on the trigger of a nuclear bomb while his state refuses to countenance international inspections and controls. This man has been lauded as a "man of peace" by George W. Bush.
The so-called "civilised world" grows "curiouser and curiouser" by the day. - Yours, etc.,
DERMOT KELLY, Milford, Co Armagh.