THIS newspaper has campaigned long and hard against involving RAF Fylingdales in the 'Son Of Star Wars' project.

So reports at the weekend that the Government has secretly agreed to house US nuclear missiles at the site are particularly alarming.

If Fylingdales' role as a listening post were considered by many to make it a potential target for attack, such an expansion of its role would surely increase this danger tenfold.

Ryedale MP John Greenway, while expressing scepticism about aspects of the report, is right to say that the Government needs to come clean and say whether or not any such agreement had been reached between London and Washington.

A beautiful national park on the North York Moors is no place for nuclear missiles which, if installed, would see Yorkshire dragged further into America's strategic games.

This costly, over-ambitious and paranoid project would be of precious little benefit to the region or to the country as a whole.

Updated: 09:59 Monday, October 18, 2004