WE remain bemused by the Government's refusal to hold a public inquiry into the foot-and-mouth crisis.

It beggars belief that a national catastrophe, which cost the country billions of pounds, is not worthy of a thorough and independent investigation.

Instead, we have three separate investigations which will prepare three separate reports, and will be unlikely to arrive at coherent conclusions.

The possibility of such a calamitous outcome is preferable, according to the Government, than the time and expense a comprehensive public inquiry will entail.

We suspect speed and cost are not the motives behind Government policy in this matter; rather that ministers are fearful of the blame which might come their way if a genuinely public, and genuinely independent, inquiry is allowed to go ahead.

The three investigations commissioned by the Government smack of a means to create a whitewash, rather than an attempt to ensure lessons are learned from the crisis.

It also beggars belief that the chairman of one of these investigations can come on a fact-finding mission to the North-East and not find time to visit a burial site which was the centre of so much controversy.

It demonstrates why the public have so little faith in the independence and scope of the investigations launched by the Government, and why the clamour for a public inquiry will not go away.

BY imposing punitive tariffs on steel imports, President Bush is showing nothing but contempt for the free world he supports.

He is using his country's economic and political muscle to promote American self-interest.

He is quite prepared to punish nations which have obeyed the rules of free trade and competition and have taken the painful steps to make their steel industries competitive, for the sake of US steel firms rooted in a bygone age.

Such blatant protectionism makes a mockery of President Bush's attempts to foster a spirit of co-operation in the campaign against terrorism.