It is time to end the western policy of malign neglect. It is in the interest of the whole world to help tackle the actual grievances in Palestine, Kashmir, and in central and southern Iraq, and to help the region out of its economic backwardness.

My interest in economics has always been in the whole corpus of economic theory, the interrelationships between the various fields of theory and their relevance for the formulation of economic policy.

The west has a great deal to answer for in the Middle East, from Britain's belated empire-building after the First World War to the US and British policy that condemns modern Iraq to the material and social squalor of a half-century ago.

Ever since the destruction of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258, the Muslim world has been in slow decline relative to the west. With Napoleon's invasion of Egypt and the creeping British annexation of Muslim India, that decline took on a malign aspect.

I think clearly shows there is a lot of interest in Iraq and reflects the general interest of the public.

The world dominion of western thought, forms of organisation, technology and military force is not God-given, nor eternal, nor greatly appreciated by the rest of the world.