The Deputy Leader of Bradford Council is right to be concerned about the effect of the US and British bombing raids on the people of Iraq. As in all conflicts and wars, it is always the ordinary men, women and children who suffer most.

Councillor Ajeeb was also right to acknowledge, in a speech last night to a meeting of Muslim groups in Bradford, that Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator who has committed atrocities against his own people.

But his inference that Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bill Clinton are as bad as Saddam while claiming to be the champions of democracy is intemperate and ill-considered. There is clearly no comparison between the tyranny inflicted daily on the ordinary people of Iraq by a brutal regime and the latest bombing campaign which, unfortunately but inevitably, has claimed innocent victims in an attempt to depose the perpetrator of that brutality.

It is beholden on a person of Councillor Ajeeb's standing, who clearly holds a position of great prominence in Bradford's Muslim community, to do all he can to bring reason and common sense to bear on such matters when there is a potential for feelings to run out of control. There is a danger that language such as that which he used last night might merely inflame passions.

No-one would condemn Councillor Ajeeb for his concern for the ordinary people of Iraq. It is a concern that all right-thinking people surely must share. But he would do better to choose his words rather more carefully.

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