I was among some 15,000 to 20,000 people who gathered in London last Saturday to protest against the continued Nato bombing of Yugoslavia. Buses came from York, Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield and Sheffield, as well as places as far apart as Lancaster and Plymouth.

We were a varied group, from many political and religious backgrounds, but were united in our call for an immediate end to the frightening bombing of "military" targets, as our spin doctors choose to call them.

Not only had we just heard of the terrible "mistake" in destroying the embassy of China, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, but increasingly we are hearing of cluster bombs being used against civilian targets in Nis (a crowded market and hospital, according to national newspaper reports) and the chemical pollution which is spreading out of control since the destruction of stores and factories.

But even more alarming is our use of depleted uranium weapons, the fearful effects of which we are seeing in Iraq - radiation sicknesses and deformed births especially.

We can stop the war but we cannot call off the lasting effects on people's minds and bodies. We continue to create bitter hostility towards the West, sowing almost inevitably the seeds of future wars.

Our Prime Minister is, alas, one of the most hawkish of the leaders of this evil campaign. Where is our "ethical foreign policy" now? What sort of future are we creating for our children? The day after the Denver school tragedy, President Clinton said: "We must teach our children to resolve their conflicts with words, not weapons."

Exactly - but how can we teach our leaders the same lesson?

Joyce Pickard,

Saville Grove,

York.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.