I wish you would delve deeper into the real causes which prompted a senior Malaysian diplomat, N Parameswaran, to go public with his resignation as chief of staff of the United Nations Transitional Authority in East Timor when his tour of duty had little more than a week left anyway.

You used a foreign news wire service story on the subject but the pick-up rate for it by the international media (so much as I can gather at any rate) has been less than overwhelming. This is not altogether surprising as it does not have the drama of a Western senior official making a similar exit.

I suspect that is precisely the frustration of countries and international officials working in a milieu of numbing Western-oriented and often Western-dominated conventionalism, all the usual hullabaloo about a commitment to diversity and tolerance of different opinions notwithstanding.

A thorough investigative piece by your medium on this subject will do much to lift the burden you work under of being perceived as an unabashedly anti-government, pro-West echo.