UFO Info Week-End

Sir: Monique Roffey’s article I’d love to go to bed with you but don’t expect to

Sir: Monique Roffey’s article (“I’d love to go to bed with you, but don’t expect to sleep”, 23 September), starts with: “Snoring is one of the most anti-social human habits.”

Let’s face it, we all snore in varying degrees. Modesty in dress is hence not oppressive, but liberating.No doubt any onslaught by a Malaysian prime minister on a demigod of the financial world will call forth a dutiful flurry of anti-Malay sentiment. But Malaysia remains a success story, with no Ulster-style religious violence between its many religious groups.As it grapples with a flawed modernity, it will continue to thrive because of, rather than despite, its confident Muslim identity.Abdal Hakim MuradCambridge. For instance, while Muslims in most countries affirm the right of religious minorities to consume alcohol, they cannot accept that alcohol is truly in a different category to other narcotics. Many look with puzzlement on the reactions to the death of the Princess of Wales, for which everything except the true culprit – alcohol – was blamed.
Muslims have similar difficulties understanding the Western urge publicly to display the human body, either in person or through images.It is not the body or private sexuality that we object to, but rather the progressive sexualisation of public spaces, which inevitably provides more scope for marital infidelity and hence the trauma of divorce.Public anatomical displays may enrich the fashion and cosmetics industries, but they are oppressively marginalising to the old, and to all who may be spiritually admirable, but physically fail to measure up to the current images of perfection.

As Malaysia opens up to the world, its young people are inevitably becoming more aware of the faults as well as the virtues of the global civilisation which the West has created. Sir: Matthew Chance’s criticisms of the Islamic revival in Malaysia show an inability to realise that non-European peoples might intelligently prefer their own values to those of Europe (“Islam’s grip tightens”, 22 September). As in all of CI’s projects, the foundation of our work begins with the local people. In Suriname, CI helped establish the bioprospecting project as a means for the country to benefit economically from its biologically rich rain forest without cutting it down.
The Maroon people of Suriname are Conservation International’s partners in an ongoing effort to prevent the wholesale destruction of Suriname’s rain forests.Lisa BowenMedia Relations DirectorConservation International. Sir: The Independent recently published an article (“World conservation groups accused of putting people last in rush to preserve endangered plant and animal species”, 15 September), which reported an accusation by the group Survival International regarding the bioprospecting project which Conservation International helped establish among the Saramaka Maroon people of Suriname’s rain forest. Sir: Before the Red Cross spend their money on designing a new logo, why don’t they rotate their current logo through 45 degrees to create a non-religious symbol?

They could call it The Red Cross.
Andy BrownSt Alban’s, Herts. Sir: I wish to add my voice to the growing number of protests against the BBC’s portrayal of the Irish in a stereotypical manner I refer, of course, to the characters in Ballykissangel

Ruth Mccracken.
Milton Keynes, Bucks.

He was a great source of international knowledge: Chou en-Lai identified one French politician as “the man who does not pay his income tax”; it was unwise to mention ballet to Brezhnev, since he would then talk for hours about it; Edward Heath at Chequers served tea made from tea-bags He officially retired from the diplomatic service in 1986.. Lipkowski, and others, believed that all the ill-feeling and misunderstanding that arose from this confusion was caused by the British desire to rush matters.Lipkowski continued to serve in the same office under Pompidou and became an experienced diplomatic traveller. The result was the “Soames affair”, arising from a lunch between the General and the British ambassador, when it appeared that de Gaulle wished to inaugurate a new Europe, governed by four powers, France, Britain, Germany and Italy. The Communists claimed to have an affinity with “Lip”, as they called him, and at the height of the 1968 student “revolution” they asked him to convey to de Gaulle the assurance that they were opposed to the “revolutionaries” and an offer of possible co-operation.In 1968 Lipkowski became Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and with his Minister, Michel Debre, decided on a new approach to Britain and the Common Market. It was two years later that he was first elected as an official Gaullist in the Charente-Maritime.During this period Soviet diplomats showed a particular interest in Lipkowski, who told them how de Gaulle was opposed to the creation of Nato (and it is relevant to note that last May one of the tests that he posed for President Chirac was how hostile was he to Nato). The President pointed out that de Gaulle would want to be more than Prime Minister.In 1958 Lipkowski was one of the founders of the Centre de Reforme Republicaine, a left-wing Gaullist organisation (which at one time hoped to gain the support of Mendes France).

He was elected on the Mendes France programme for Seine-et-Oise in 1956. But in December of that year he and Valery d’Estaing headed a deputation to President Coty urging him to make de Gaulle Prime Minister. His father died as a hostage in the Second World War, and his mother, Irene de Lipkowski, was in the Resistance and was deported, returning to France to become the president of an organisation for families whose members had been killed as hostages or fighters in the Resistance. She subsequently became an independent deputy and lived until the age of 96.Lipkowski entered the diplomatic service and represented France particularly in the Far East and in different parts of North Africa. He became good friends with Chiang Kai-shek and with President Sadat of Egypt. But at the same time he was attracted by politics, and since the General was immured in Colombey-les-deux-Eglises he turned to Pierre Mendes France (whom he knew through his mother).