More Trouble for Blair
Source: Britain Spied on U.N.’s Annan. Highlights:
- LONDON – British intelligence agents spied on U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan (news – web sites) in the run-up to the Iraq (news – web sites) war, a former member of Prime Minister Tony Blair (news – web sites)’s Cabinet said Thursday.
- Short, who resigned her post after the campaign to topple Saddam, said she had read transcripts of Annan’s conversations while she was a Cabinet member.
“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.
- 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.”
- [Claire Short] resigned in May, complaining the United Nations did not have a large enough role in reconstruction. Since then, she has called for Blair to resign, accusing him of misleading the country about the threat posed by Saddam.
- Reacting to the Gun case and Short’s allegations, Blair told reporters: “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 β whether false or true actually β and get away with it.”
AB