Hurd's history
Sir: Since either charity or shortage of space forced Dr Noel Malcolm to curtail his indictment of Douglas Hurd, perhaps I could take up some of the slack relating to his catastrophic record as foreign secretary. 1. The saving of lives by escort convoys in Bosnia was resisted by Hurd in the EC and the Cabinet every inch of the way. Not a single life would have been saved if it had been left to him.
2. His part in antagonising President-to- be Clinton was worse than that of Conser- vative Central Office, because it was done in public: a telegram to the Republican statesman James Baker expressing the hope that his side would win.
3. At the exact moment when Hurd should have been deterring Iraq from invading Kuwait, he gave Saddam maxi- mum encouragement by ending restrictions on arms exports (19 July 1990). In the run-up to both the Gulf and Falk- lands wars, each of which could have been prevented by competent diplomacy, Hurd was a minister at the foreign office. This is a unique double, and looks like careless- ness. But it is probably something much worse: a deep lack of belief in anything.
Hugh Hanning
18 Montpelier Row, Blackheath, London SE3
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