- British agents spied on the United Nations Secretary
General Kofi Annan in the run-up to the Iraqi war, the former International
Development Secretary Clare Short claimed today.
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- Ms Short - who quit the Cabinet in protest against the
war - made the claim while being interviewed on BBC Radio 4's Today programme
about the implications of the collapse of the case against GCHQ whistleblower
Katharine Gun.
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- Asked whether British agencies had been involved in spying
activities against Mr Annan, Ms Short said: "I know, I have seen transcripts
of Kofi Annan's conversations.
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- "Indeed, 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'."
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- Ms Short was asked whether she believed that British
spies had been instructed to carry out operations within the United Nations
on people such as Kofi Annan.
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- She replied: "Yes, absolutely."
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- Ms Short was asked whether she knew about such operations
when she was in Government.
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- She said: "Absolutely, I read some of the transcripts
of the accounts of his conversations."
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- Asked whether she believed that was legal, she said:
"I don't know, I presume so. It is odd, but I don't know about the
legalities."
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- Asked about the Gun case, Ms Short said on the Today
programme: "This centres on the Attorney General's (Lord Goldsmith)
advice that war was legal under resolution 1441, which was published, but
was very very odd.
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- "The more I think about it, the more fishy I think
it was. It came very, very late. He came to the Cabinet the day Robin Cook
resigned, sat in Robin's seat, two sides of A4, no discussion permitted.
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- "We know already that the Foreign Office legal advisers
had disagreed and one of them had said there was no authority for war."
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- Ms Short went on: "My own suspicion is that the
Attorney General has stopped this prosecution because part of her (Mrs
Gun's) defence was to question the legality and that would have brought
his advice into the public domain again and there was something fishy about
the way in which he said war was legal."
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- She added: "The major issue here is the legal authority
and whether the Attorney General had to be persuaded at the last minute,
against the advice of one of the Foreign Office legal advisers who then
resigned, that he could give legal authority for war and whether there
had to be an exaggeration of the threat of the use of chemical and biological
weapons to persuade him that there was legal authority.
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- "I think the good old British democracy should keep
scrutinising and pressing to get the truth out.
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- "The tragedy is that Iraq is a disastrous mess.
Ten thousand Iraqis have died, American troops are dying, some of our troops
have died, the Middle East is more angry than ever.
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- "I'm afraid that the sort of deceit on the route
to war was linked to the lack of preparation for afterwards and the chaos
and suffering that continues, so it won't go away, will it?"
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- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=495198
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