Brits, U.S. Accused Of U.N. Spying

The United Nations said Thursday that alleged British spying on Secretary-General Kofi Annan's office, if true, is illegal and must be stopped.

It was the world body's first official reaction to the charge by Clare Short, a former member of Prime Minister Tony Blair's Cabinet, that Britain spied on Annan in the run-up to last year's Iraq war, when Washington and London tried unsuccessfully to get U.N. authorization to attack Saddam Hussein.

Short 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.

Shorts comments came just days after British prosecutors dropped legal proceedings against Katharine Gun, a former intelligence employee who leaked a confidential memo raising concerns about U.S. spying in the United Nations.

Short said she had seen transcripts of Annan's conversations and wondered if her own talks with him were monitored. Asked explicitly whether British spies had been instructed to carry out operations within the United Nations on people such as Annan, she said: "Yes, absolutely."

Short's charge dominated Blair's monthly news conference,

"I'm not going to comment on the operations of our security services," Blair said.

"But I do say this: we act in accordance with domestic and international law, and we act in the best interests of this country, and our security services are a vital part of the protection of this country.

"So I'm not going to comment on their operations, not directly, not indirectly. That should not be taken, as I say, as an indication about the truth of any particular allegations. And I think the fact that those allegations were made I think is deeply irresponsible," Blair said.

U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said the United Nations "would be disappointed" if the allegation is true.

"Such activities would undermine the integrity and confidential nature of diplomatic exchanges," he said. "Those who speak to the secretary-general are entitled to assume that their exchanges are confidential."

Eckhard said Britain's U.N. Ambassador Emyr Jones-Parry, who is in London, called Annan on behalf of Blair, but the U.N. spokesman provided no details about their conversation.

Asked whether bugging the secretary-general's office was illegal, Eckhard said, "It is indeed considered illegal." He cited three international laws, the most important being the 1946 Convention on The Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, which Britain signed the year it was adopted.

There was no shock in U.N. corridors Thursday at Short's allegation. Spain's U.N. envoy Inocencio Arias said at the United Nations "everybody spies on everybody."

If Short's claims are accurate, they point to a broad surveillance campaign at the United Nations in which the United States also may have played a part.

Mexico's former ambassador to the United Nations recently said it was common knowledge the United States had spied on U.N. delegations in the run-up to the war in Iraq.

The comments by Adolfo Aguilar Zinser came after Mexico acknowledged it sent a letter in December asking the United States and Britain to explain recent accusations of spying on United Nations delegations.

The Jan. 31, 2003 memo — which Gun leaked to London's Observer newspaper — said the wider U.N. eavesdropping effort was concerned with "the whole gamut of information that could give U.S. policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals or to head off surprises."

The memo was drafted by a National Security Agency officer. It said the NSA was "mounting a surge" in surveillance directed at Security Council members "for insights as to how to membership is reacting to the on-going debate RE: Iraq, plans to vote on any related resolutions, what related policies/ negotiating positions they may be considering, alliances/ dependencies, etc."

The memo then lists the countries this target list would include: Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan. All were considered undecided in the run-up to a crucial vote on the U.S.-backed resolution authorizing force. The U.S. ultimately pulled the resolution fearing defeat either because of a French veto or a majority vote.

The NSA did not comment on the report last year.

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 about the case for war.

The government has in recent months been criticized for its presentation of intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Gun's lawyers speculated the case was dropped because they had demanded the government disclose advice it received from Attorney General Lord Goldsmith on the legality of going to war. Ministers have repeatedly refused to make the advice public.