Letter: Timor warning

Sir: We are too scared to help countries like East Timor. And there are many other trouble spots all over the world. What we need is cheap, tough armies to take off the shelf. The United Nations pays them and they do the fighting.

And where better to look than than Russia? Half the Russian army are starving, unpaid and growing potatoes to survive, growing restive, perhaps thinking of challenging their current democracy or turning their attentions to us at some point. Let's put them to work. East Timor is a good place to start. It may solve two problems at once.

BOB GOODALL

St Albans, Hertfordshire