JOHN O'SHEA,
Madam, - Martyn Turner's excellent cartoon of January 24th says more about the state of international relations in one panel than the mountain of reading material I have waded through in the last year. Famine and AIDS are indeed "weapons of mass destruction" threatening the lives of 60 million people.
Your Africa correspondent, Declan Walsh, also frequently shines light into some otherwise murky corners. In his "Letter from Nairobi" of January 23rd he tells of the new atmosphere of optimism and confidence in since the recent ousting of the corrupt and brutal Daniel Arap Moi.
The 24-year "slide into poverty for everyone, save the thieving elite" is by no means unique to Kenya. Throughout the developing world, corruption is the third deadly factor in perpetuating the poverty and misery of many millions of people.
The death toll from these three evils will be many times higher than any war in Iraq and yet the bulk of the media, as usual, choose to cover the "sexy" war story.Let us hope that the Kibaki regime in Kenya can honour its pledges to tackle corruption and that the country has not sunk too low for its people to tackle the long climb ahead of them. They deserve whatever assistance the Irish nation can offer them. - Yours etc.
JOHN O'SHEA,
GOAL,
Dun Laoghaire,
Co Dublin.