CRISIS IN THE LEBANON

Sir, - Dick Spring (April 18th) claims that on my radio programme on 98FM on Mondaynight, I was offered a full account of his reaction to the crisis in the Lebanon but that I wasn't interested. Not so.

His adviser, Fergus Finlay, was on the programme commenting ion his dispute with the Sunday Independent, I asked him about Dick Spring's reaction to the murder of civilians in the Lebanon by the Israeli military forces. He said he had been on leave over the previous week and was not briefed on what had happened in relation to that matter, but offered to get the information if required. I assumed he meant he would get the information in the course of the programme and, in that context, I said no, that wasn't necessary because it was tangential to the issue he was on to discuss.

The following morning however, before writing my column for last Wednesday's Irish Times, I contacted the press office of the Department of Foreign Affairs and was supplied with Mr Spring's statement of April 14th.

It is interesting to note the diplomatic manoeuvres that Ireland has participated in to bring a resolution to the crisis in Lebanon, but that is irrelevant to the point I made that the slaughter of innocent people should call for more than Dick Spring's pallid plea for "the utmost restraint". Not much of an advance on the Irish policy on the Middle East forty years ago, when the then Minister for External Affairs called for a resolution of the conflict between the Jews and the Muslims in "a Christian spirit". And nowadays we are supposed to have something called "principled neutrality".

Yours etc

Dublin.