UN Chief wants spying to Stop by Reuters / ABC News / The Guardian 10:01am 27th Feb, 2004   February 27, 2004. (ABC News Online)    United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan says any attempts to spy on his office would be illegal and should cease immediately.    A former minister in the Blair Government, Clare Short, says Britain spied on Mr Annan during key debates at the UN in the lead-up to the war in Iraq. Mr Annan says any spying on his office should stop.UN spokesman Fred Eckhard says he would be "disappointed" if the claims are true.    "Such activities would undermine the integrity and confidential nature of diplomatic exchanges," he said. Mr Eckhard says the espionage could have undermined the secretary-general's efforts to head off the war in Iraq. "The secretary-general therefore would want this practice stopped, if indeed it exists," Mr Eckhard said.    Britain's ambassador to the UN, Emyr Jones Parry, telephoned Mr Annan on behalf of British Prime Minister Tony Blair after the story broke. At a media conference overnight, Mr Blair has declined to comment on the work of his intelligence services."No Prime Minister has done that, I'm not going to comment on it," he said."Do not take that as an indication that the allegations that were made by Clare Short this morning are true.    "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," Mr Blair said.    Ms Short made her allegation on a breakfast radio program, saying: "The UK at this time was also spying on Kofi Annan's office and getting reports from him about what was going on." Ms Short claims to have read transcripts of the secretary-general's exchanges.    The allegation follows a similar claim by an intelligence worker who says the US National Security Agency asked British spies to bug the offices of UN delegates in the lead-up to war.    Former UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros Ghali says he is not surprised by the allegations.    Mr Boutros Ghali says it is a "tradition" for those countries that have the technical means to bug the UN chief.    Intelligence expert Glenmore Trenear-Harvey says he is not unduly surprised by the latest spy claim either."What secret intelligence agencies do is gather intelligence, they gather it on a covert basis through surveillance, through agents in place," he said. "The fact that they were doing it in relation to Kofi Annan it doesn't surprise me at all."    The ABC understands that the telephone of former chief weapons inspector Hans Blix was also tapped and transripts of his conversations were seen by Australia's Office of National Assessments.    -- Additional reporting by Kirsten Aiken, Rapheal Epstein and the BBC.    26 February 2004    "If reports that UN was bugged prove true practice must stop" (UN News Service)    Reacting to today's media reports alleging that Secretary-General Kofi Annan's conversations were tapped by British intelligence, a United Nations spokesman said if this practice exists it should stop.    "We would be disappointed if this were true," Fred Eckhard told reporters in New York. "Such activities would undermine the integrity and confidential nature of diplomatic exchanges."    "Those who speak to the Secretary-General are entitled to assume that their exchanges are confidential," he emphasized.    Mr. Eckhard added that the UN would step up its routine technical measures aimed at guarding against such invasions of privacy.    Asked whether the practice of bugging the Secretary-General was regarded as illegal, the spokesman replied affirmatively, citing the 1946 Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the UN, the 1947 "Headquarters Agreement" between the UN and the United States, and the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.    In particular, he referred to Article 2 of the 1946 treaty, which states that, "The premises of the United Nations shall be inviolable. The property and assets of the United Nations, wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall be immune from search, requisition, confiscation, expropriation and any other form of interference, whether by executive, administrative, judicial or legislative action."    Mr. Eckhard noted that the UN could take steps - such as using secure phone and faxes lines - to secure the confidentiality of communications. "I don't know that anyone has protection against satellite intercepts, but although this 1946 Convention was written more than 50 years ago, clearly it would apply to all forms of interference, including things that weren't even imagined then, namely satellite intercepts."    The spokesman also confirmed that the British Ambassador to the UN, who is currently in London, called the Secretary-General this morning on behalf of Prime Minister Tony Blair.    "These premises are inviolable under international law, and we expect all Member States to respect their commitment," Mr. Eckhard emphasized. "We're throwing down a red flag and saying, 'If this is true, please stop it.'"    February 26, 2004    "Blair Hit by UN Spying Claim, Attacks Accuser" By Mike Peacock. (Reuters)    LONDON (Reuters) - Britain spied on U.N. chief Kofi Annan before the Iraq war, former minister Clare Short said on Thursday, threatening a fresh crisis for Prime Minister Tony Blair as he tries in vain to put the conflict behind him.    Blair declined to address the claim, beyond saying British security services acted within domestic and international law. But the U.N. declared any such operation would be illegal.    "This is something which is not entirely surprising," Andreas Nicklisch, deputy director of the U.N.'s Brussels office told Reuters. "It's illegal of course, but it's also unnecessary because we work in complete transparency and openness."    Short's allegation comes a day after Britain dropped charges against a translator who admitted leaking a top-secret U.S. document seeking London's help in bugging United Nations members in the run-up to the war.    The former aid minister, who resigned after the war but was in government during the period when London and Washington sought U.N. authorization for military action, said Secretary-General Annan's office had been specifically targeted. "In the case of Kofi's office, it was being done for some time," Short told BBC Radio. "I read some of the transcripts of the accounts of his conversations."    Blair reacted angrily to his now frequent critic, saying she was undermining the intelligence services and British security as it faced a real threat from ruthless Islamic militants.    "The fact that those allegations were made... is deeply irresponsible," he told a news conference in his Downing Street home. "We are going to be in a very dangerous situation as a country if people feel they can simply spill out secrets or details of security operations, whether false or true."    Iraq has become a political nightmare for Blair. Ten months after Saddam Hussein was toppled, none of the banned weapons Blair claimed Iraq had primed for use has been found.    The premier's public trust ratings have slumped and many in his Labour Party feel betrayed to the point of mutiny. Bob Worcester of pollsters MORI said Blair remains favorite to win a third term at next year's election but with a halved majority of 60-80 in the 659-seat parliament, from 161 now..    February 27, 2004    UN chief stood in way of war plans" by Brian Whitaker. (The Guardian)    In the last few weeks before the invasion of Iraq it became clear that President George Bush, with Tony Blair in tow, was bent on war - and one of the key people standing in his way was the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan.    While the US president was impatient to get on with the attack, regarding Saddam Hussein as a bad guy who should be ousted as soon as possible, Mr Blair hoped the UN would provide international backing, but it was not going well.    Renewed UN inspections in Iraq had failed to discover the weapons of mass destruction that Britain and the US insisted were there. Worse than that, the chief UN inspector, Hans Blix, began to challenge American claims that the Iraqis were engaged in deception over the alleged weapons.    The Iraqis, contrary to US and British expectations, were not provoked into a confrontation with the UN inspectors, and instead proved surprisingly cooperative.    In addition, there were widespread doubts that security council resolution 1441, approved in November 2002, provided a legal basis for war. The resolution merely threatened "serious consequences" if Iraq "continued violations of its obligations".    As far as Britain and the US were concerned, the UN was becoming an obstacle to the overthrow of Saddam, rather than a means of facilitating it.    Central to all this was Mr Annan, who had made it clear that he wanted to avoid war if possible, and was determined not to let the reports from his weapons inspectors provide a pretext for it.    From a British and American viewpoint, there might have been several reasons for wanting to keep an eye on Mr Annan's activities:    · To find out what was being said in his exchanges with other security council members that might hamper their own plans;    · To check whether he was exceeding his brief as UN chief - in which case they might take action against him; and    · To discover what the weapons inspectors were telling him in private, amid suspicions that he was trying to "sex down" their reports to avoid giving Washington and London an excuse for military action.    Mr Annan was extremely active in the month or so before the war, seeking an alternative to bloodshed. In February he attended an informal EU summit and met the Pope with senior Vatican officials, one of whom had visited Saddam days earlier.    In early March a group of Arab foreign ministers who had also been in touch with Iraq visited Mr Annan at the UN. Diplomatic contacts became even more intense in the fortnight before the war.    Britain and the US were hoping for a final security council resolution to legitimise the invasion. Britain became the driving force, drafting the resolution and taking charge of the diplomacy.    With the security council plainly divided on the issue, attention focused on six members - Angola, Cameroon, Guinea, Pakistan, Mexico and Chile - whose views were unclear. Britain desperately wanted them to swing behind its draft resolution, but could not risk defeat in a vote. It therefore needed to gather as much information as possible about their intentions.    Nobody at that stage had a better overall picture than Mr Annan, who was in regular contact with the 15 security council members. On the morning of March 13, for instance, he had private meetings with all but two of them. Whatever Britain might have gleaned from any transcripts of his conversations, it was not enough. The proposed resolution had to be dropped and the war began without it. Visit the related web page
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