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Britain's Secret Service Spies on U.N. Boss

British intelligence agents spied on U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan in the run up to the Iraq war, a former member of Prime Minister Tony Blair's Cabinet said Thursday.

Clare Short, who resigned as international development secretary following the campaign to topple Saddam Hussein, said she had read transcripts of Annan's conversations.

"The U.K. in this time was also getting, spying on Kofi Annan's office and getting reports from him about what was going on," she said in an interview with British Broadcasting Corp. radio.

Blair's office had no immediate reaction to Short's claims.

When asked to clarify her comments, Short repeated her allegation.

"I know, I have seen transcripts of Kofi Annan's conversations. In fact I have had conversations with Kofi in the run-up to war thinking 'Oh dear, there will be a transcript of this and people will see what he and I are saying."'

Asked explicitly whether British spies had been instructed to carry out operations within the United Nations on people such as Kofi Annan, she said: "Yes, absolutely."

Short's comments came as she was interviewed about the decision made Wednesday to drop legal proceedings against a former intelligence employee who leaked a confidential memo raising concerns about spying in the United Nations.

Katharine Gun, 29, a former Mandarin translator with Britain's Government Communications Headquarters listening station, allegedly leaked a memo from U.S. intelligence officers asking their British counterparts to spy on members of the U.N. Security Council before the Iraq war.

The charge against Gun was dropped after prosecutors said they would offer no evidence against her.

But opposition politicians have questioned whether the decision was politically motivated, and whether the British government intervened to stop the case, fearing disclosure of further embarrassing details.

Short was one of two Cabinet members to resign in protest to Britain's participation in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Robin Cook, a former foreign secretary, resigned as leader of the House of Commons before the campaign began.

In the past, Short has called for Blair to resign, accusing him of misleading the country about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

"I have concluded that the prime minister had decided to go to war in August (2002) sometime and he duped us all along," she was quoted as saying in a newspaper interview last June.

"He had decided for reasons that he alone knows to go to war over Iraq and to create this sense of urgency and drive it. The way the intelligence was spun was part of that drive," she was quoted as saying.(AP)

Beirut, 26 Feb 04, 11:12


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