The news that the Department of Trade and Industry approved the export of Beryllium - a key component to make nuclear weapons - to Iran is proof, if any were needed, that the Government does not take seriously the issue of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), despite its Iraq rhetoric.

The UK government has had an arms embargo on Iran since 1993 and has signed up to an international protocol which bans the sale of Beryllium to several countries, including Iran. This news emphasises the weakness of the UK's export control system, but it also highlights the Government's true colours with respect to non-proliferation.

While they are gearing up for a war on Iraq, with apparently little evidence of Saddam Hussein's arsenals and without any realistic threat posed by him to the West, they are letting vital nuclear components slip into the hands of Iran, and breaking the non-proliferation treaty by doing so.

If the Government concentrated more on genuine efforts to decrease proliferation by tightening up their arms export policies - and less on warmongering - then perhaps we could start to make genuine steps towards disarmament. Instead, the UK is selling nuclear materials to states internationally recognised as dangerous, and at the same time maintaining and threatening to use their own nuclear arsenal.

Any attack on Iraq, either on the grounds that it has WMD or is fuelling proliferation of them, would not only be immoral and unjustified, but also offensively hypocritical.

Neil Kingsnorth,

Development Worker,

Yorkshire CND,

Edmund Street, Bradford.

Updated: 10:29 Thursday, September 26, 2002