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Sir, Mikhail Gorbachev’s letter should have given MPs, and especially Des Browne, reason to pause. We listen time and again to the mantra from the Prime Minister and members of the Government that the UK needs nuclear weapons in the face of today’s uncertain strategic environment. Yet no challenge the UK faces is greater than that confronting Mr Gorbachev’s country at the height of the Cold War, and even then he was able to see the need for “new thinking”— which happily changed the course of the world when he and Ronald Reagan backed it up with courageous action.

Many of the scientists and politicians who brought us the nuclear age ultimately regretted the dangerous world those weapons created.

As MPs place their vote on Wednesday, they should imagine having to look Mikhail Gorbachev and all the remaining survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the eye as, through their vote, they tell the world where Britain stands on nuclear weapons.

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SANDRA IONNO BUTCHER
British Pugwash Group
sibutcher@earthlink.net