SIR - It looks like Gordon Brown intends to maintain a British presence in Iraq to avoid embarrassing a president whose popularity ratings are among the lowest ever recorded.

Brown is due to make a statement to the House of Commons in early October.

Stop the War Coalition has called a demonstration outside the House of Commons on Monday, October 8, the day Parliament re-assembles, to represent the anger felt by the anti-war majority in this country over Britain's continuing participation in one of the worst war crimes in recent history.

As with Iraq, we are being lied to and deceived over Afghanistan.

Liberation and prosperity is promised to the Afghan people but what they get instead is bombs, slaughter and total destruction of their infrastructure.

NEIL LAURENSON, Worcester.