MORE MAILBAG

I understand that your organization has written to Condoleezza Rice, U.S. Secretary of State, questioning the wisdom and motives for the voluntary boycott against Aruba.

I can well understand that the Aruba Tourism Authority is so discredited by the cover-up in the Natalee Holloway case that it realizes it is regarded with contempt and disgust. Accordingly, it has asked your organization to speak out.

Before you attach yourself too publicly to the Aruban cause, though, let's make one thing clear: the U.S. government is not the motivating force behind the boycott. Nor is the U.S. government in a position to call it off. The boycott is the doing of the American people, who know a lie when they see it. And we see it in Aruba now.

The victims in the Natalee Holloway case are not the Aruban people, but rather the Holloway Twitty family, and most specifically Natalee Holloway herself. The boycott is the result of the Aruban government's decision to protect its own, and while the cover-up continues the boycott will only gain in strength.

Aruba has shut off the lines of communication with the Holloway Twitty family, barred the FBI's assistance, and whines about its tourism (even as it says the boycott is having no effect). Aruba can choose to take the high road or the low road in this matter, and if it continues to dither, delay and deny, seemingly to protect a handful of culprits, any effects from a boycott will be its own responsibility.

I can understand the concern of other Caribbean nations. On the idea of "where there's smoke, there's fire," tourists may well decide to avoid the region. Indeed, the unsolved disappearance of Amy Bradley from a cruise ship docking in Curacao in 1998 should make anyone considering a Caribbean visit think twice.

My advice to your organization, if I may give it, is to take the moral stance and make every effort to urge Aruba to stop protecting its own. For the sake of your public relations, not to mention basic decency, you should be publicly the harshest critic of Aruba's evasions. By urging sympathy for a regime that has essentially denied the rights of an American family to seek justice, you risk being put in the same category.

And being associated with Aruba is something that nobody should want.

Richard Rogers, Vermont, USA