WE should reject Foreign Secretary Jack Straw's attempt to pull the wool over our eyes by character profiling Osama bin Laden as being a crazy nihilist; a rebel without a cause.

Mr Straw is aware that the issue is about control of Middle East oil and gas resources. Laden and his associates are concerned to wrest control of these resources from western oil interests. "They are taking our money," he said in an interview.

There are no working-class issues at stake in this struggle, which is why socialists don't take sides in it.

BRIAN LIVESEY (member, Socialist Party of Great Britain) Belfield Road, Accrington.