Madam, - With an engaging, but very imperial, sense of diplomacy, the Danish ambassador announced the conclusion of the debate on Greenland and the fate of the Polar Inuit (July 7th). However, since Danish writ has not run on D'Olier Street for a thousand years, I'd like to make a further point, if I may.
Thule, from which the Polar Inuit were deported in 1953 to accommodate a top-secret US nuclear air base, is hardly among the tourist attractions mentioned by the ambassador. The following quotation from Jean Malaurie's intensively researched book Ultima Thule, must be taken into account before the past is conveniently airbrushed out. It refers to the crash of a US bomber in the vicinity of Thule airbase on January 21st, 1968.
"The B-52 disintegrated on impact, causing its 132,500 litres of fuel and the conventional explosives accompanying three of its four nuclear bombs to detonate. Thus three bombs along with their payload of plutonium, uranium, americium and tritium, were blown apart across an area of 15 to 20 square kilometres. . The fourth nuclear bomb vanished into the ocean depths. . The fourth bomb posed a serious problem: it was supposed to have been recovered by American submarines in 1979, but there are still serious doubts about this claim, and it has never been officially proven."
Today, we know that a massive clean-up of contaminated material was carried out by ill-equipped personnel, including local Inuit, without protective clothing and that severe cancer clusters ensued.
Having seen for myself the disastrous effects of Russian policies on the Arctic nomads of northern Siberia, I would argue that we in the developed world have failed to respect these remote cultures of the north. - Yours, etc.,
DERMOT SOMERS, Drogheda, Co Louth.