With echoes of some of the practices of foreign companies coping with hyperinflation in South America, businesses would be free to choose local or common currency for their pricing, payroll, dividends, bank deposits and the presentation of their accounts. Individuals would be able to have local and/or common currency bank accounts.A parallel common currency sidesteps a sterile win/lose debate and has the advantage of increasing the democratic choices available to the peoples of the EU. It cannot be a bad thing if, at least in one aspect of our lives, our politicians will have to bid for our allegiance not once every five years, but every day.JOHN BERRIMANReading, Berkshire. Sir: I read Jack O'Sullivan's "Irving and Sereny go to war" (6 June) and I have to take issue with David Irving's comment, "I was told the shop wouldn't be taking it because Gitta Sereny's book on Albert Speer did so badly, which surprised me because I thought it had done well." I can put on record that Albert Speer, His Battle with Truth was a bestseller in every market we published it, both nationally and internationally. It would need to be freely exchangeable against all major EU and EU trading partner currencies. Sir: In your leading article on "Britain and Europe" (3 June) you say that "the single currency cannot be run without a single European economic policy alongside it.

Monetary policy and fiscal policy cannot be disentangled." With the current concept of a single Euro-currency as the only currency that would be legal tender in any EU member state your view is hard to challenge and has drawn support in your letters pages - although it seems mainly from Labour MPs who perhaps see preserving all the prerogatives of state spending as more central to their political philosophy. If we accept this concern over who has control of national fiscal policies whilst at the same time believing that there would be some virtues in a common currency (as would most European businessmen who operate in more than one member state) perhaps the pro-Europeans should work up a proposal for a parallel common currency.Such a parallel currency would have a status not dissimilar to gold in previous centuries as being an elective medium of trade. But if the Queen had a free choice - well, now, she just might decide to favour a member of the officer class, mightn't she?. If the Commons is left to choose between Mr Major, Mr Blair and yours truly, it's a fair bet yours truly won't get a look in. If he wins a second term, he must use it to consolidate and extend democracy. The cause of freedom in Russia matters profoundly to all of us outside its borders, as well as within; if Russia fails, following this election, to strengthen and improve its nascent democracy, we will all suffer the consequences..

What might happen if (joy of joys, so far as Paddy is concerned) Tony Blair or John Major have to sidle silkily up alongside the Lib Dems and solicit their coalition support? Paddy's answer, in our interview with him today, is rather curious: why, he wonders, should the Queen get to choose the Prime Minister? Why not get the House of Commons to choose the new PM, on (presumably) a free vote? Well, just think for a minute, Paddy. Paddy Ashdown has been fantasising (in the nicest possible way) about hung parliaments. But Mr Yeltsin has, over the past three years, done as much to hinder his country's democratic development as he has done to promote it. Having suffered centuries of autocratic rule and 70 years of violence and intolerance under Communism, Russia cannot be expected to turn into a model democracy overnight. The semi-democratic, semi-authoritarian Yeltsin-led state would lose many of its democratic features under a Zyuganov presidency.However, if the West is right to hope for a Yeltsin victory, it must also hope that there will be more progress during Mr Yeltsin's second term towards consolidating democratic institutions and making Russia a law-based state. The difficult but often constructive relationship that the West has with Mr Yeltsin's Russia would turn into something more tense with Mr Zyuganov in the Kremlin. He has manipulated ethnic and territorial disputes and exerted Russian economic power to regain influence over many former Soviet republics.

He has strenuously resisted Nato's enlargement, without showing much sensitivity to the craving for security that dominates the attitudes of central and eastern European countries.Still, matters would probably be worse under Mr Zyuganov. By forcing Russia's central bank to hand over 5 trillion roubles (pounds 600m) for the funding of his spending promises, the president has compromised the bank's independence - a fundamental feature of Russia's economic reform programme, on which co-operation with the International Monetary Fund and other Western institutions must depend. Mr Yeltsin's team has also succeeded in slanting television coverage of the election grossly in favour of the president, to the point where Mr Zyuganov might use Mr Yeltsin's abuse of media freedom to justify a crackdown on the Russian press and broadcasters if the Communists should win.In his foreign policy, Mr Yeltsin has fallen short of Western expectations. Lack of proper legislative oversight has enabled sinister individuals in the presidential entourage, notably Mr Yeltsin's personal bodyguard, Alexander Korzhakov, to acquire excessive influence.Mr Yeltsin's campaign tactics are also open to criticism.

Since his first election victory in June 1991, Russia has evolved under Mr Yeltsin's leadership into a strange hybrid of democracy and autocracy. It has given ordinary Russians more freedom than perhaps at any time in their history, but it has also conferred too much power on unaccountable institutions such as the armed forces and the renamed but not so reformed KGB. Yet a second term in office for Mr Yeltsin would bring its own problems, in Russia and outside. Neither in the West nor at home is Mr Yeltsin recognised any longer as the courageous crusader for democracy and human rights who did more than any other person to bring down Communism in 1991.His record has been badly tainted by the brutal and unnecessary military crackdown in Chechnya. In many people's eyes, he was also wrong to blow up the Russian parliament in 1993 and introduce a constitution that hobbled the legislature and placed all effective power with the presidency - that is to say, himself. Should he defeat Mr Yeltsin in the expected second round run-off in early July, Mr Zyuganov would probably not return Russia to its blackest authoritarian past. But the fragile democratic institutions set up in the 1990s would almost certainly not be able to take the strain of a Communist presidency, and there is a serious risk that Russia's relations with the West would descend into confrontation.As Western governments and most Russian liberals have recognised, the dangers associated with a Zyuganov presidency are so great that a Yeltsin victory is preferable.