Isn't it in fact perfectly bearable if we spread the cost? And I do not demand as a taxpayer that the

Isn't it in fact perfectly bearable if we spread the cost? And I do not demand, as a taxpayer, that the asylum system is "fair" to me, any more than I demand that the war in Kosovo is. I merely demand that the asylum system is fair to those who are in need of asylum.We can do better than this. If the Government were to say to the British people that it did not regard immigration as some great threat, that we had a moral obligation to those needing asylum and that this - not preventing economic migration - was the priority, would it really be risking some hideous race war?So let's keep the bits of the Bill that speed up and clarify the appeals procedures, and let's just junk the rest. Labour MPs should go to the whips today and tell them that they simply cannot support the Bill as it stands.

Because they know, as do I, what we would have said if Michael Howard had come up with something so irredeemably shabby.. FINALLY, IN a period of missteps, accidental Nato attacks and confusion on Capitol Hill over whether the House supports or opposes the air war, there is good news: the release of the three American prisoners of war. Full credit in securing their release should go to the Rev Jesse Jackson and a private delegation of religious leaders, including Los Angeles' Rabbi Steven Bennett Jacobs and Dr Nazir Uddin Khaja of the American Muslim Council. The religious leaders had been publicly urged not to go to Belgrade by the Clinton administration and had been warned that the mission was dangerous and ill-timed. No one can know the cynical reasoning that might have motivated President Slobodan Milosevic to release the soldiers. But the point is that Jackson delivered, winning the release of the prisoners without apparent conditions. Los Angeles Times AFTER MORE than a month of grim tidings from Yugoslavia, the release of three captive American soldiers is heartening.

But Slobodan Milosevic's good-will gesture alone is not sufficient reason to suspend the air war. As President Clinton rightly noted yesterday, Christopher Stone, Andrew Ramirez and Steven Gonzales are headed home after 32 days in Serbian custody, but a million ethnic Albanians expelled from their villages cannot yet return to their homes. Nato leaders should intensify their diplomatic efforts, but until Mr Milosevic takes the steps necessary to restore peace to Kosovo, there should be no bombing pause.The New York TimesPRESIDENT CLINTON took the right approach on Sunday. He compared the three soldiers who are coming home with the million Kosovars who, by Serbian act, are not able to go home This is what any realistic negotiation must be about. Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian president, evidently realized it would not help him much to make Jesse Jackson the conveyor of any serious Serbian negotiating initiatives.