TONY Blair has called for "a new partnership" with Iran, provided the extremist Tehran regime supports peace between Israel and Palestine, and stops its nuclear weapons programme. The PM may as well have asked Kim Jong-Il to embrace democracy or Fidel Castro to seek medical treatment in Miami. It is pie in the sky. Blair knows that his slavish support for the debacle in Iraq, costing allied lives on a daily basis, has also handed Iraq on a plate to Iran.

While Saddam ruled Iraq with an oppressive iron fist, he maintained an uneasy Sunni bulwark against the vast Shia multitudes in neighbouring Iran. Now, thanks to Blair and Bush, the long-coveted strategic objective of the Islamo-fascist mullah regime in Tehran is about to be realised. It has poured tens of thousands of trained revolutionary guards into Iraq to bolster the insurgency. They have killed and maimed thousands of allied troops and Iraqi citizens. It finances Hamas in Palestine and, together with Syria, it was the puppet-master behind Hizbollah's war against Israel in Lebanon. It is accelerating its nuclear weapons programme so that it can, in the words of its President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad [pictured], "wipe Israel off the map".

It is against this incredible background that Tony Blair calls for help in Iraq. He apparently considers a partnership with Iran and Syria to be a serious possibility. Perhaps Winston Churchill should have entered into a partnership with Hitler to avoid the Second World War?

Struan Stevenson, MEP, The European Parliament, Brussels.

LET'S not be fooled by the recent comments made by Tony Blair at his Guildhall speech and in his evidence to the Iraq Study Group that this discredited Labour administration has an interest in a fair resolution to the Israel-Palestine question. This is an attempt to distract us from our recent noble endeavours in the Middle East. This government has, as we have now come to expect in so many areas of foreign policy, consistently backed the US game plan of supporting Israel at whatever cost to the Palestinians. We continue to sell Israel arms, block EU criticism of Israeli actions and resist making public statements critical of any Israeli actions, however outrageous. There is much talk of Iran's as yet non-existent nuclear weapons programme yet complete silence on Israel's very real nuclear arsenal.

The US will have a "special relationship" with anyone who will buy a bottle of cola or a slice of any old baloney. As a compatriot of Mr Bush said: "There's a sucker born every minute." For sucker, read clapped-out premier of a small client nation. Although where that leaves us - the docile electorate - I do not know. ID card, anyone?

Martyn Quinn, 6 Kinarvie Place, Glasgow.

I'M NOT a fan of cosmetics in either the actual or the metaphorical sense. However, I do believe that Thomas McLaughlin should be soundly castigated for calling Tony Blair a "lipstick leader". This is a vile slur on lipsticks everywhere.

Norma Anderson, 1 Mitchell Crescent, Elgin.