10 MAY 2003, Page 30

Who's kidding whom?

From Mr Neil Clark Sir: What is it about the Russian position on weapons inspections that a man of Mark Steyn's undoubted intellect fails to understand ('Why I nearly resigned', 26 April)? The Russians have said all along that sanctions should only be lifted when the UN inspectors had finished their job. The official US line has been that sanctions on Iraq should only be lifted when that country was deemed free of 'weapons of mass destruction'.

The absence of proof, as Richard Perle told us in February, did not mean that Iraq had no such weapons. Now, though, in the US's new-found enthusiasm for sanctions to be lifted, it apparently does. And Mark Steyn believes it's the Russians who are living in Alice in Wonderland. Neil Clark Oxford