Readers are invited to submit letters to The Guardian.
Letters may be e-mailed to guardian@cpa.org.au.
Letters of 300-400 words are preferred.

Letters to the Editor:

Open letter to Mr Alexander Downer
Minister for Foreign Affairs

I wish to register my total opposition to your support for a US attack 
on Iraq.

The World Summit on Sustainability in Johannesburg certainly indicates 
better ways of spending our scarce resources. Funding for NATO's 50-day war 
against the former Yugoslavia would have eliminated world illiteracy, for 
example.

In case you should cry "appeasement" let me remind you of the way you 
appeased the Indonesian TNI in East Timor, brushing off all reports of 
intimate collusion between them and the militias by claiming that only 
rogue elements were responsible.

Let me also remind you of the cocktail party you attended in Dili in 1999 
at which Australian Federal Police Agent Wayne Sievers attempted to give 
you intelligence reports contradicting what you were telling the Australian 
people.

You stood back while one of your minders took the intelligence — you just 
did not want to know so you could continue your appeasement of the 
Indonesian military.

Your actions, Mr Downer, were implicated in the bloodbath and mayhem that 
wracked East Timor. Now you are baying for more blood to be shed, this time 
in Iraq.

With these facts in mind it does not surprise me that you have switched to 
opposing the International Criminal Court even though we have just 
witnessed the legal debacle in Jakarta where war criminals are being let 
off.

East Timor is calling for international legal intervention so that these 
butchers, including those of high rank many of whom were trained in 
Canberra and Canungra, can be brought to justice.

It's time you gave your conscience a workout, Mr Downer — thousands of 
innocent lives depend on it.

Gareth W R Smith
Byron Bay, NSW

Enclosed is something ($100) to help the Movement, but also an 
accompanying statement in memory of my Aunt Olga (who was also the mother 
of Guardian columnist Rob Gowland).

Around 1950-51, in the south-eastern Sydney suburb of Kingsford, a regular 
seller of the Communist Party newspaper Tribune had a stand on Anzac 
Parade near Gardeners Road.

On one particular Saturday, the Tribune seller was hauled away by 
the police on the complaint of the proprietor of a chemist shop, outside of 
which the comrade was selling the paper.

The police refused to let the Party member collect his money box or his 
unsold papers and magazines. My dear Auntie Olga saw this happening; she 
was doing her weekend shopping, but she also regularly bought her copy of 
the Tribune from that seller.

She took over the Communist paper stand in front of the police, and after 
being warned, she collected the papers and the money box in front of the 
police and (despite threats from the coppers) took them home — to be 
returned to the seller when he was released by the cops.

Bravo Auntie!

Larry Gowland
Tasmania

Please accept my small donation toward your appeal. I have only been a 
subscriber for a short time after my father pointed the way with a gift 
subscription some months ago. I like that you have adopted a position, 
instead of sitting on the fence, as the other paper, the Melbourne Age 
does.

I am tired of seeing all the letters from Israeli sympathisers that are 
given inordinate space in the letters column. That Editor should have heard 
the lies broadcast over the surrounding area of a Jewish school in 
Elsternwick, after one of the Israeli army massacres!

In searching for facts I found The Partition of Palestine, a small 
book I was able to access through the municipal library, by Neil Grant 
(World Focus Book, Franklin Watts Inc. New York 1973) which reveals the 
indefensible situation on the State of Israel.

To always see the truth in print, even when sometimes mistakes are made by 
freedom fighters, is most important to me and other readers. The 
Guardian alternative is fascinating reading, keep up the good work.

Robert Newey
South Melbourne, Vic