LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 
International Herald Tribune
February 28, 1992

A First Lady's Conscience I take great exception to Peggy Antrobus's comment in your issue of Feb. 25 regarding the International Fund for Agricultural Development Summit on Rural Women, in Geneva ("Fear Not, Aminata, the Royals Are Nigh").

My mother, Datin Seri Dr. Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali, is one of the first ladies who initiated the summit meeting. She is a medical doctor who spent most of her career working in rural areas on public health programs, with particular emphasis on maternal and child health. She did all this before her husband became the prime minister of Malaysia.

As the wife of the prime minister, she is able to combine her considerable social conscience with the clout to get things done. In doing so, she has carried out an enormous amount of work for a number of good causes. She shows that people in privileged positions are quite capable of feeling great concern for the underprivileged and using their positions to take positive action.

Social conscience is not the exclusive preserve of the non-elite, as Ms. Antrobus seems to think. Does she believe that women who happen to marry government leaders have no hearts and brains, and should be decorative when they can do much more?

MARINA MAHATHIR-ROUSSILLE.

Kuala Lumpur. - Half-Right or All Wrong? Regarding "The Japanese Critic Was Half-Right" (Opinion, Jan. 25-26) by A.M. Rosenthal: With all due respect, I disagree with Mr. Rosenthal. The Japanese statesman's unstatesmanlike criticism that American workers are lazy and illiterate is not half-right, as Mr. Rosenthal says, but entirely wrong. The relationship between literacy rate and labor productivity is rather remote. At a time when the U.S.-Japan relationship is already strained by irresponsible criticism from both sides, the remedy, I fear, will not come from more determined efforts on the part of Japan's conventional policymakers - the self-proclaimed American affairs professionals - no matter how well-intentioned they may be. This is because their traditional policy approach - designed to accommodate American requests, right or wrong - is the very source of today's strain. We are trapped in a vicious circle. Clearly, new blood and fresh approaches are needed, and urgently. DON M. IKEDA. Tokyo. - Shuttle Versus Ozone In response to the editorial "Revive the Ozone Agenda" (Feb. 7): The space shuttle destroys tons of ozone during each launch. During its first two-minute burn the shuttle emits 187 tons of chlorine and chlorine-containing compounds, 7 tons of nitrogen oxides and close to 180 tons of aluminum oxides. How many refrigerators and spray cans does that make? KROV MENUHIN. St. Rémy de Provence, France.

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