Sunday Telegraph from London, Greater London, England • 18

Page 18 THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH NOVEMBER 2, 1986 How to prevent Reagan doing another Yalta 1c IF ALL NUCLEAR weapons and missile systems were voluntarily withdrawn by the two superpowers, the peoples of those two countries would have every reason to believe that their world had become a far safer place. Although in theory Russia 1 and the United States could go to war with treach other using conventional weapons, the likelihood of such a confrontation is tuvery remote. Nobody imagines that the zi Red Army would pour across the frozen 5, wastes of Alaska, or the United States Marines advance the other way. So far as the peoples of both Russia America dare concerned, total nuclear disarmament would be a wholly good and blessed thing. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for vi the peoples of Western Europe.

So far as we are concerned, removal of nuclear weapons would make us very vulnerable indeed, since a nothing Western Europe could put in the field conventionally would begin to be a match for 0. the Red Army. In theory. our conventional weakness could be remedied. But in practice there is absolutely no question of this happen- ing.

Russia is a highly mobilised State, operating what amounts to? a war economy. It has conscription, direction of labour and a population brainwashed from an early age into the belief that the Soviet Union has a duty to spread Communism throughout the world. Short of Western Europe putting itself on a comparable war basis, and re-introducing compulsorily some of the traditional military practices and virtues, there is no way that we can ever match the might of the Soviet Union conventionally. Nuclear disarmament for Western Europe, therefore, means permanent inferiority and vulnerability. After Reykjavik, the prospect of such a deal becomes far too real for comfort.

Our first reaction should be to pay tribute to the wisdom and foresight of previous British and French Governments for making sure that at least two Western European powers have nuclear weapons of their own which President Reagan cannot bargain away even if he should wish to do so. Nuclear weapons, from the European point of view, have much to commend them. They are far cheaper than conventional defence, and far less demanding in terms of militarising the young. If decadent The real enemy of a blustering BBC -NORMAN TEBBIT's decivsion: to publicise his complaint against the BBC took riconsiderable political courpage. For in any conflict it has with the Government, the BBC has at least as many "weapons as its opponent.

Its independence is established by Charter, and the licence fee is not due to be renegotisated until 1988. Mr Tebbit has power to order the BBC about. Alasdair Milne, the Corporation's DirectorGeneral, is well aware of this, so his statement accusing the Government of trying to intimidate the BBC is thoroughly disingenuous. He would obviously prefer to play on public anxieties about Mr Tebbit's authoritarianism, and turn the whole issue into a partisan dispute in the Commons, rather than defend the BBC's reputation for good journalism. That would involve either a detailed refutation of Central Office's critacisms, or an assurance that the cause of error had been identified and corrective action taken.

But that is not how the BBC does things these days Sixty vears ago. during the General Strike. Winston Churchill did try to intimidate the BBC into presenting only the Government's version of events. infant organisation had little or none of the international Preputation, public, regard, or standing with the Establishment that it would later enjoy, but its Director General. Reith, was still able to resist successfully He could take his stand on the BBC's independence because of his confidence in its journalistic standards.

Those standards have gone, and the confidence with them. which is why, despite 1 all Mr Milne's attempts to blus- By Bruce Anderson ter, is now thoroughly demoralised. Sometimes that seems left from the great days is arrogance. In the hours after the American raid on Tripoli, there appears to have been an atmosphere of near hysteria in the BBC's television newsrooms. Experts on the Middle East were brought in and asked to tell the viewers that the raid had greatly increased the likelihood of terrorism, and would unite the Arab world against the United States.

When some of them said that, on the contrary, the American action would discourage terrorism, and that measures to curb Gaddafi would be greatly welcomed in Arab capitals, BBC staffers reacted with incomprehension. Meanwhile, the Libyan-controlled footage was allowed to take over the editorial process: the BBC based its headlines and commentary on what Colonel Gaddafi's men allowed Miss Kate Adie to see. When it comes to any complex issue of foreign policy, most of the BBC can be relied on to respond with antiAmericanism. The tenor of its television reporting after the Libyan raid was that a wave of anti- American feeling was. sweeping the world: it was certainly sweeping Lime Grove.

That continues. After Reykjavik, Martin told his viewers that President Reagan could now expect the wrath of the American people. Mr Bell has been stationed in Washington for "I've forgotten where we went to dinner. I've even forgotten the name of the girl. But the cigar was definitely Montecristo." To find out what makes Montecriste so memorable, send for your free copy of our illustrated guide to these famous cigars, their history and where to buy them.

(No stamp required.) To Montecristo, FREEPOST, PO Box 16, Blackburn BB2 6EY. Name. Address Post Code 000 at MONTECRISTO HAVANA CIGARS 5 SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 135, FLEET STREET, LONDON ECAP 48L. TEL: 01-353 4242 Athens had been possessed of nuclear weapons, Sparta's advantages would have been set at nought. Progressives should be all for nuclear defence, since it is the only sort that allows a society to remain safe and soft, secure and sedentary.

Conventional rearmament, on a scale commensurate with the Red Army challenge, would play havoc with the Welfare State and the habits of a liberal society, the continuance of which, in the postReykjavik world, may come owe much to British and French independent deterrents. All the above is written on the assumption that the United States and the Soviet Union might reach an agreement which does away with much of their nuclear arsenals without any fundamental Russian change of heart about its duty to spread Communism across Milne: disingenuous strongly-held political beliefs "Weekend World journalists are under an obligation to research a story thoroughly, and to do full justice to all the major points of view involved, however antipathetic they may find some of them. The problem with BBC Television's current affairs is not that it has a surfeit of Lefties, but that it is deficient in intellectual curiosity. Far too many of its journalists seem to have fallen in with a set of easy liberal opinions while at university, and to have convinced themselves that theirs is the only legitimate way of looking at the world. Even when they are Conservatives, they are Hampstead Conservatives.

If they were to meet anyone who argued in favour of, say, the death penalty, corporal punishment in schools, inherited wealth- or. President Reagan's foreign policy- would dismiss him as eccentric, or evil. But they are unlikely to encounter such disturbing persons for many BBC journalists have an absurdly narrow intellectual circle. They tend to work and the face of the globe, if necessary by force. Here we come to heart of the problem so far as Western Europe is concerned.

For, given a different kind of Russian foreign policynon-aggressive. and non-expansionist-there there would be nothing to fear from the kind of superpower disarmament deals discussed at The reason that there is much to fear arises from the fact that President Reagan appeared to be willing to do a disarmament deal without linking it to any basic change of Russian foreign policy. Mercifully, disagreement about SDI preed So Western potentially Europe has a reprieve, development. which must be put to good purpose. That purpose must be to persuade President Reagan to use SDI as a massive bargaining chip for a political settlement with the Soviet Union; one which really did result in a nonexpansionist Russian foreign policy.

All the evidence from Reykjavik suggests that the Russians would make great sacrifices to get the Americans to forgo the advantages of their technological superiority. So far the Russians have offered only thermonuclear sacrifices. Let them be asked, even pressurised, into making political concessions: in Eastern Europe, in Central America, in Africa and Afghanistan. From the Western European point of view, such political changes are absolutely indispensable if there is to be any agreed allied approach to thermonuclear disarmament. For without these political changes, superpower thermonuclear disarmament could render Western Europe much less secure than it is under the existing arrangements, awesome though those are.

It would seem that for the first time since the Soviet Union achieved nuclear parity with the United States, thing has happened to give America, once again, a potentially decisive advantage. That something is called SDI. At Reykjavik President Reagan sought to exploit this advantage without much regard for Western Europe, in much the same way as President Roosevelt did not give Eastern Europe much thought at Yalta. At the next summit. President Reagan must be expected to do better.

For if he does not, the result could be another Yalta, this time sealing the doom of Western Europe. Peregrine Worsthorne Guest columnist RONALD PAYNE THE FIRST political party in Britain to include in its election programme a promise to declare war upon France will be assured of a landslide victory. The power of the French' Factor as a potential votewinner was manifested again last week as all the old hatred, jealousy and envy of the cross-Channel neighbour poured forth when the French Government declined to do what Sir Geoffrey Howe was telling it to do the Hindawi affair. Backbenchers settled down comfortably into the old routines of denouncing Paris as the centre of all evil and disloyalty. How very convenient is the existence of a permanent duty scapegoat placed just across the English Channel to take the blame for our troubles.

A tone of high moral indignation sets in because the garlic-eaters actually choose to put what they consider to be their own interests first. It is a French lesson we might do well to learn. They actually go out and sell things, including weapons, to foreign countries while we huff and puff about who might be considered worthy to receive the produce of our factories. The French choose to be flexible when responding to trouble, be it terroristinspired or otherwise; sometimes deciding to strike hard, sometimes preferring to negotiate, the better the opponent guessing. I can't see anything very terrible in that.

Despite all the tiffs over tactics and life-styles, we are actually on the same side and share the same enemies. To compensate for Clouzot we Essex CID. Mercifully there is also a balance of neighbourly terror which makes it possible for the French to blame us for every disaster, and when in doubt we can always cement the entente cordiale by uniting to blame the Americans. The time to secure the seat belts for a bumpy ride is when France and Britain agree to work together to build a tunnel or launch military expedition, toasting each other the undrinkable cocktail of whisky and champagne. REMEMBER SUEZ? I do, because in that November 30 years ago, got up as war correspondent, I made my way to Port and Said, bearing badged and an official dressed licence to report.

It took us all rather longer to get there than it had taken Admiral Nelson to get to the Nile. Once the few hours of shot and shell ended in truce, and when, to the stupefaction of those present, the British refused to drive quietly on down the canal to Suez itself, we all felt slightly ridiculous. There was not an awful lot to be done except to giggle at Your King is a unanswerable slogans, as scrawled on the walls by witty Egyptians to irritate the troops. Taking refuge from such dire insults, used to lunch in a French officers' mess with the best food in town, done by a Vietnamese chef they had prudently brought back from IndoChina. For evening drinks there was a cosy mess frequented by a jovial bunch of provincial bank managers disguised in battledress because sad bugles had called them into the Royal Army Pay Corps from places like Tunbridge Wells to smite Nasser.

Port Said was a place familiar to me, since I had spent the preinvasion summer there, passing many an hour at the Blue Angel nightclub where music was provided by a group known as Mohammed Ali and the Port 'Said This proved an advantage as I strolled along the barbed wire awaiting final evacuation. The Egyptians were out in force across the wire equipped with Kalashnikov rifles. firing enough feu de joie rounds to stop a division. some years- -can he really be so ignorant of American public opinion, so blithely unaware that the United States does not consist solely of Georgetown and the offices of the New York Times' For much of the time the BBC prefers to report anything to do with President Reagan in the spirit of "Spitting Image" without puppets. As to the fact that this stumbling old dotard is so popular with his fellow Americans well, that just shows that they must be as bad as he is." It is, of course, perfectly possible to disagree with the President, but to refuse to take him seriously give up any hope of understanding the United States, or indeed world affairs.

How often does the BBC take him seriously? Its viewers are simply not given a proper opportunity to make informed judgments about American policy. The BBC's coverage of the United States is vitiated by its failure to be objective. Of course, the whole concept of objectivity has been much derided in recent years. There is no doubt that in a period when political divisions are increasingly sharp, and in which more and more subjects are politicised, it is very difficult to come up with a definition of objectivity that could withstand the probings of a -year philosophy student. However, objectivity is like an elephant -it may not be possible to define it, but it is very easy to know whether it is there or not.

I should probably have declared an interest before this point. for until 1 joined The Sunday Telegraph, I used to be a producer on ITV's Weekend World." which has been accused of many things over the years, but rarely, if ever, of lack of objectivity. This is not an accident. Whatever their own views and most of them do have Tebbit: courageous socialise with those of the same persuasion as themselves, and to be at the mercy of peer-group pressure. So they make which appeal to each other's stale prejudices.

Norman Tebbit's letter began with the sentence: The BBChas a worldwide reputation other broadcasters envy." ends by quoting from the BBC's own guidelines: "Without maintaining the highest standards of truthfulness and impartiality it is difficult for any broadcasting organisation to be recognised as being truly independent and worthy of trust." The BBC may be wary of Mr Tebbit's motives, but it should take him at his (and its own) word. Why not hand over his letter of to an independent arbitratorlike Sir Ian Trethowan (who would bring both experience and impartiality) or Julian Haviland? Then, if the criticisms are 'upheld, act on them--and apologise. But all that is unlikely to happen, for the BBC is far happier playing politics with its critics than responding to criticism. That is why it is mistaken in thinking that its worst enemy is the Government: it is itself. A bit blotto in the grotto THE LAST CENTURY, so jam-packed with worthy bards, produced among others the poet Thomas Edward Brown, provider of the off line, garden is a lovesome thing." Although the word love" some and meaning lovely would not by any means be everybody's favourite adjective, it could just have got by had not Mr.

Brown, in an continued unbridled with poetic outburst, the words God wot' and added, if you please, an exclamation mark. One feels somehow that God should be above, and in no need of, exclamation marks. The poet required, of course, a suitable rhyme for rose plot' and fern'd grot," the latter noun being a shortened form of grotto, a word for which perfectly good rhymes suggest themselves, blotto" for one. This the word that the mischievous Sitwells managed to persuade their father, the unworldly Sir George, just meant tired in order to have the joy of hearing him say loudly at the end of a long dinner party, I feel extremely blotto." It wouldn't have been, I suppose, poetically, interesting just to write God knows" but think of the possible gardening rhymes we could repeat knows" as nose (for sniffing scents), and then there's hose (for watering), doze (forty winks in the hammock), rose and blows (noses again). In point of fact I'm not sure how wise gardener Brown was to drone on about what now seems a very meagre horticultural attraction.

The garden certainly contained a "fringed pool but fringed with what, may I ask? One seems to see Canadian pondweed taking over. There is very little to recommend in dank "Death to the British," they screamed, but when I came abreast of old friends, including patrons of the Blue Angel, they kindly added a sub clause: Not you, Mr an admirable distinction, demonstrating that race hatred was not involved. TO BUCKINGHAM PALACE the other afternoon. Odd how irresistible it is to be able to drop that into the conversation considering that at heart I'm a practising republican, largely because all the pomp and circumstance of royalty creates a mildly embarrassing effect. It must be confessed anyway it was only a below-stairs visit for get of journos and media-minders.

all off next week in the "Eighth as they say on royal occasions, in the flying cortege Arabia the Prince and Princess of Wales. We shall all have to be on our best behaviour, for the Gulf Emirs and Saudi Arabian royals are an omnipotent and sensitive crowd and, what is more, the guardians of the Holy Places of Islam in Mecca. On an earlier visit to Saudi Arabia I was permitted to spend a morning with the then King Faisal in his majlis, a court held in the medieval style when commoners may approach the lord with petitions, or just to have a chat. That morning a particularly argumentative old man had come specially to dispute a theological point which frankly left me confused. But the King enjoyed it.

That sort of thing might be to the taste of the Prince of Wales. I will keep you posted. THE MIGHTY are fallen and the was a two-edged sword of Islam. which for a while did more for the Arab cause than all the bombs and bullets. But as glut succeeded shortage and prices tumbled, it brought the fall of Yamani, a talented manipulator and a rare non-royal of the Saudi middle class.

His beautiful second wife, Tammam, suffered a minor cultural setback a few years ago. The Lady Mayoress of Cardiff, I think it was, at a glittering municipal reception, surveyed the remarkable elegance of the Arabian lady swathed in several thousand pounds' worth of Parisian haute couture, and declared; What a pretty frock, my dear." BASTARD is the most common shout of anger and abuse in the English language. It is delivered in every conceivable accent, a rude word of hatred still employed by all, regardless of race, creed, colour or class. At a time when sociologists, psychiatrists and bishops urge everyone to believe that illegitimacy is no sin, and when the Law Commission is recommending that ignominy should be removed from bastardy, it does seem bizarre that in the verbal armoury of nastiness the word retains its old power to hurt. Maybe the Commissioners ought to think about suggesting an alternative to complete the process of recognising, the fact that more and more people are in fact illegitimate.

Next time I am crossed by some brute of a sports car driver I intend to run in one or two new curses, such as, You son of a one parent family, It may take time to catch on. But as I intend to start trying my hand at journalism (that's where the big money is these days), the effort should worthwhile. oil weapon invented by Sheikh Zaki Yamani in 1973 to terrify the West has perished. It By ARTHUR MARSHALL grottos, though they may be (probably harts-tongue or boring old spleenwort). There is a don't rose mind plot" (Dorothy but Perkins! betting) line of the very sure God walks in reveals a sadly boastful, nature that one can hardly admire.

Another what one might call literary garden, that of the long-lived Poet Laureate Tennyson, has much more to say for itself, even though Maud shows an almost psychopathic reluctance to come into it. One begins to suspect something nasty in, in this case, the potting shed. Again and again the poet rattles out the garden's pleasing features though it seems superfluous to announce to Maud that the black bat, Night, has flown and it is therefore daylight with the garden all ready for viewing. No sensible girl is going to wander along flowery paths in the dark. Anything might happen she could catch her wellies on the crazy paving, stumble over the bird-bath and measure her length in the delphiniums.

THIS YOU PI PLEASE KEEP OF THE BRIGS Never mind. We have the Laureate's assurance that awaiting timorous Maud there are honeysuckles wafting away like anything, roses of course, jasmine, lilies, a lake (I think), violets (out of season, acacia trees in full bloom, larkspur and passion flowers (I'll As is Nature's, way, also awaiting Maud be ground-ivy, dandelions, and that odious little creeping thing that gets everywhere, but I do see that that wasn't the ideal moment for tioning them. One would hardly have cared to be Kipling's gardener. There is certainly, spacious talk of stately views, of borders, beds and shrubberies, and lawns and avenues," followed by peacocks (such a din!) and terraces, before we get down to what now seems to be called the nitty-grittyweeding gravel paths with broken dinner-knives, back-breaking work among the strawbugs, slugs and rough and calloused hands. All right for some, as they say, especially those on the terraces Bellamy he may bring Among the rather few jolly post-war happenings, we must happily list the quite extraordinary upsurge of interest and skill in all forms of gardening and throughout the entire country (even poor old British Rail has busied itself with baskets).

A wonderful Devonian summer treat is a visit to Lympstone on the Exe estuary where every house provides a really sensational floral display, displays that can be matched all over Britain. see that last year British gardeners bought 40 million packets of seeds, 35 million rose bushes and 45 million house plants. Oh (for once), hooray for us! Amberon Waugh is in.