Commitment on 'rendition' flights

Madam, - Any commitment by our Government which would advance human rights in any part of the world is to be welcomed

Madam, - Any commitment by our Government which would advance human rights in any part of the world is to be welcomed. I refer to your front-page headline "Government to ensure gardaí can search planes at Shannon" ( The Irish Times, November 1st). However, this 11th-hour decision leads me to wonder about the motives behind the Government's belated Pauline conversion.

Is this yet another example of "cute hoor" Irish politics, whereby the Government stayed "onside" with Bush and his warmongers while it was expedient to do so, but has now read the new writing on the wall, which says an incoming US administration will move to close down the infamous Guantánamo detention centre and end the illegal and immoral "rendition flights".

If it is now right "to ensure gardaí can search planes at Shannon", why was it not right last year or the year before?

One might have thought that our totally discredited ministers would have got the message by now that they cannot fool all of the people all of the time. We are not all as "green" as Mr Dermot Ahern and his colleagues in this new Cabinet grouping, so conveniently and opportunely now committed to abolition of "rendition flights" through Ireland, seem to think. - Yours, etc,

GEARÓID KILGALLEN, Crosthwaite Park South, Dún Laogháire, Co Dublin.