Sir, - I'm confused. The US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, and Pakistan's General Pervez Musharraf have agreed that any future Afghan government should be set up "without outside interference" (The Irish Times, October 17th). Yet at the same time they are negotiating with each other the broad composition of that government.
Surely any free world worthy of the name should be in favour of free elections in Afghanistan? If Taliban candidates, be they moderate or not, win seats, it should be the choice of the Afghan people and not that of the US State Department or Pakistan's military rulers.
Afghanistan should not be moulded into another autocratic but West-friendly state like Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Tunisia, where elections are far from free and human-rights abuses and are blatantly overlooked by free-world governments in the interest of a cheap supply of oil or the fear of a population voting for the government it really wants. - Yours, etc.,
David O'Donoghue, Barcelona, Spain.