The language of persuasion versus the voice of reason

Author’s reply SIR—With respect to your correspondents’ comments, I can only emphasise that the various reports that I cited were derived from—in the case of Ukraine, official sources, and in the case of Georgia, a source believed by me to be reliable. If your correspondents indeed can prove that the true situation is less alarming than these reports indicate, I would be delighted. Unfortunately, a working lifetime's experience in the former Soviet/Comecon space has taught me that, on many occasions, specialists working on joint international projects in this area do not necessarily see the full—and gloomiest—side of the picture. (The Chernobyl accident was a case in point, in which for 2 years and 10 months, no western specialist acknowledged the extent of the northward contamination into Belarus. Another was the abortive attempt of a British company to clean up the Vistula in the 1980s, which collapsed when the British side realised that their Polish “partners” were not allowed to provide them with the relevant data.) I am not saying that the old cover-up policies still exist, rather that there are still black holes and pockets of uncertainty in the dissemination of less than favourable information. Under the circumstances, it is perhaps as well that these issues have been raised if only to elicit another side of the picture. I should like to emphasise, incidentally, that I have in the past had considerable reason to be personally grateful to President Eduard Shevardnadze of Georgia.