Northern Ireland's lessons for Ukraine

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/23/northern-ireland-lessons-ukraine

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It is alarming that western leaders, including Cameron, seek to pose as judge, jury and executioner on the issue of who downed MH 17 (Report, 23 July). Why are none of them championing the legal route? They need to gather the evidence from the crash site, from the witnesses who saw the Buk missiles in Torez etc – give it all to the judges at the international criminal court in the Hague (self-evidently the right place for this case to be heard) and have them try those deemed to be responsible for the crime. Eleven years ago, Vanessa Redgrave called, at the rally in Hyde Park, for that route to be taken against Saddam Hussein, rather than the Bush-Blair invasion: think how much trouble and pain it would have saved had her advice been taken.

If a link can be proved between Putin's government and the MH17 crime, let him be called as an accessory. And if he doesn't come, let him be tried in absentia. And if, as he did a month ago with Assad, he tries to get the UN security council to block the prosecution, find a way to try him anyway. The world must see that the force of law can prevail over the law of force.

In the 1980s, my organisation spent nine years working to end the cold war through youth citizen diplomacy. The last thing we want to see is a resumption of cold war tensions. No one has a quarrel with the Russian people: why punish them with level 3 sanctions? Everyone has a problem with a government that gives lethal weapons to rebel armies who do not know how to use them and causes the death of hundreds of innocent people. It is such governments, and the individuals who lead them, who must be punished.David WoollcombePresident, Peace Child International

• David Cameron's comment that France's sale of helicopter carrier/assault ships would be "unthinkable in Britain" (Cameron calls for arms sales ban, 22 July) is the purest hypocrisy. The article mentions UK arms sales to Russia of many billions of pounds and no doubt UK companies competed for many of the contracts won by France and Germany. Anyway, as the privatised UK energy companies are buying huge quantities of Russian gas and coal, it is UK consumers who are helping to pay Russia's arms bill.

Politicians always play fast and loose with the truth where arms sales are concerned and myopia and a bad memory are also great political assets in the arms trade: British fighter jets helped to bring down Allende in Chile, UK Centurion tanks were the core of victorious Israeli battles, and in the recent past the UK delivered weapons to a rightwing Argentina weeks before the Falklands invasion led by British-built and designed vessels.

Your thoughtful leader on Indonesia (23 July), questioning whether the military establishment there will continue to enable democracy to write that new chapter, might have mentioned that this summer they will receive three Govan-built warships.Robert StraughtonUlverston, Cumbria

• Oliver Bullough (Comment, 21 July) and Angus Roxburgh (Comment, 22 July) are right. We have a responsibility to assist, not just to condemn. Thinking about the problems in Ukraine from Northern Ireland suggests some ideas. Both eastern Ukraine and Northern Ireland are ethnic frontier zones in which people with two distinct identities and allegiances have to live together. After 50 years of fighting about rival claims to sovereignty over Northern Ireland, the British and Irish governments finally realised that it was better to recognise realities and negotiate a kind of shared status in which as an individual you could be British or Irish or both and in which power-sharing in regional government was required. And as in Northern Ireland the politics of the latest atrocity – Canary Wharf or MH17 – can get in the way of progress.

The Northern Ireland settlement is widely touted around the world as a way of dealing with divided identities and allegiances. Is it not time in Ukraine for a similar acceptance of realities – dual Ukrainian and Russian citizenship for those who want it, negotiation of some kind of power-sharing regional government between the competing factions and recognition of a legitimate Russian interest in looking after Russian communities there?

The British government should be sharing its experience in these matters with others in the European Union. We should all be looking for ways to talk politics with the "terrorists" rather than imposing sanctions on Russia and supporting a military campaign to restore absolute Ukrainian sovereignty.Tom HaddenEmeritus professor of law, Queen's University Belfast

• How about denying Russian oligarchs' children access to our charitable institutions such as public schools?Martin JeevesCardiff