Respect is due

Michael Kelly (Opinion, 27 July) is deluded if he believes "independence would set Scotland's place in the world back 20 years". The sad reality is we don't currently have a recognisably autonomous place in the world to lose.

This fact was underlined by the apparent expectation of the US Senate that it was appropriate for it to call upon the Scottish Justice Secretary - the current political guardian for the supposedly "independent" Scottish judicial system, as "guaranteed" not by devolution but by the Treaty of Union - to give a further explanation in person of a quasi-judicial decision he had taken almost a year ago in relation to the release of Mr Megrahi.

Moreover, the former UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, had already attempted to undermine the autonomy of the Scottish legal system in his notorious "deal in the desert" with Colonel Gadaffi, negotiated without reference to the devolved Scottish administration (or for that matter to the US Senate) and indeed against its wishes.

It's all very well for Dr Kelly to call belatedly for "collaboration" between Holyrood and Whitehall in relation to issues with foreign policy implications, but such "co-operation", as I would prefer to call it, can only be based on mutual respect, something lacking from the outset in the attitude of the Blair-Brown government towards the newly elected SNP administration.

IAN O BAYNE

Clarence Drive

Glasgow