FIFA must honour its declarationDear Sir, After working with a trading house in Doha from July 2010 to December 2012, I returned to Chennai in India and I am still based there. But I still have great respect and regards for Qatar.I personally witnessed the great joy in Qatar when football’s governing body FIFA announced on December 2, 2010 that Qatar would be hosting the World Cup in 2022. Both citizens and expatriates were ecstatic.And now I am surprised to see a persistent campaign, apparently orchestrated by some groups, against Qatar’s successful bid.Qatar is preparing to host the mega event with all sincerity. Corruption charges levelled against FIFA are purely an internal matter to be solved by itself. What is declared to the world needs to be honoured at any cost in the interest of the game and all concerned. Coming up with corruption charges against FIFA officials after some years itself is a big corruption to extract money and nothing else.Joseph Anandaraj M, M-20/44,9th Street, Anna Nagar East, Chennai 600 102Put down the atomic gunDear Sir,Nato, led by the US, and Russia are engaged in a deadly game of nuclear brinkmanship. The US is rehearsing nuclear chess by expanding Nato,and inviting neutral countries in Europe to form an anti-Russian alliance. Russia is practising nuclear roulette, by expanding deep into Ukraine.Ever since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, world leaders have had the wisdom to avoid another nuclear war. Humanity witnessed the terrifying destructive power of nuclear weapons and vowed never to repeat the mistake.But there is growing fear now that mankind has not witnessed its last nuclear war.We live in the shadows of a new and deadly “cold war”. Many sober observers believe the world is closer to a nuclear war now than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis.Cold war tactics are now in the realm of the rationality of irrationality.It is the equivalent to nuclear roulette, a version of political roulette in which the entire world is at stake, with a two- or three-chambered revolver. Every small conflict pulls the trigger in nuclear roulette. In the metaphor of nuclear roulette, every day, we pull the trigger of the many-chambered nuclear gun pointed at the head of civilisation.Brinkmanship between Presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin is a shared risk of war in which each side pushes the other towards the brink of disaster or war even closer in order to force the other side to capitulate at the last second.The only way to survive nuclear roulette, is to put down the atomic gun.The current constellation of global events makes nuclear war virtually inevitable.We cannot continue on our current course forever.Farouk Araie, farouk.araie@telkomsa.netPlease send us your letters By e-mail: editor@gulf-times.com.