inside the glass house

The bug that Short bared: Britain violates UN sanctity
NEW YORK -- UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was furious. The British intelligence agency had apparently bugged his 38th floor offices in the UN Secretariat and listened in to his conversations with world leaders.
The fine art of political espionage and electronic surveillance of political opponents are common in most civilised countries of the world -- both North and South.

A former Sri Lankan head of government once sent one of his trusted envoys to New York to shop for an expensive electronic device that was capable of intercepting faxes before they could reach the original recipient's fax machine.

A government could get away by spying within its own national boundaries. But doing so within the precincts of the UN -- which is inviolable international territory -- is a no-no. And even if you do spy, the moral of the story is: don't get caught.

Unfortunately for the British government, one of its former cabinet ministers went public last week with a convincing charge that the Secretary-General's "secure" phone and his "secure" sanctum were no longer holy.
Clare Short, Britain's former minister for international development, told BBC that British intelligence agents had routinely spied on Annan -- and particularly so before the war against Iraq last March.

Just weeks before the war, Annan was constantly in touch with several world leaders, including Arab heads of state, in an attempt to stall an invasion of Iraq and find a peaceful solution to the crisis.
"The UK in this time was also getting spies on Kofi Annan's office and getting reports from him about what was going on," Short said.
"In the case of Kofi's office, it was being done for some time. I read some of the transcripts of the accounts of his conversations," she added.

And when she herself had a round of talks with Annan behind closed doors, she was thinking: "Oh dear, there will be a transcript of this, and people will see what he and I are saying."
No wonder the Secretary-General was livid. Everything that a head of state or head of government had confided in him either in person or over the phone had been under surveillance by the Brits.

Can any world leader feel secure talking to the Secretary-General candidly -- even without note takers?
If a room is bugged, they say, the only safe place to talk is under the shower because that's one way to beat a listening device.
But how could the Secretary-General shower with a head of state -- even if it is only to save on water?

Annan strongly feels that UN premises, whether in New York or Geneva, are inviolable -- and any country that violates that sanctity is guilty of an illegal act.
On Thursday, UN spokesman Fred Eckhard told reporters: "We have seen today's media reports alleging that the Secretary-General's phone conversations were tapped by British intelligence. We would be disappointed if this was true."

"We are throwing down a red flag and saying that if this is true, please stop it," he said.
Eckhard also said that 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 added.

Asked whether anyone close to Annan could have been involved in leaking information to British intelligence, Eckhard said there was no reason to suspect any staff member working in the Secretary-General's office of such an act.
"All U.N. staff are expressly prohibited from taking instructions from governments," he added.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair dismissed the allegations as "deeply irresponsible".

"'I am not going to comment on the work of our security services-- do not take that as an indication that the allegations made by Clare Short are true," he told reporters.
"I really do regard what Clare Short said this morning as totally irresponsible and entirely inconsistent," Blair added.

Short resigned from her cabinet post last year in disagreement with Blair over the war on Iraq, even though she was still a cabinet member when UK joined the US in the military attack.
The UN Secretariat routinely takes technical measures to guard against invasions of privacy, but those efforts will now be intensified.

Any spying on the United Nations is a violation of three international treaties: the 1946 Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations; the 1947 Headquarters Agreement between the United Nations and the United States; and the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

Last month there were reports that at least two UN missions in New York -- the Mexican and the Chilean Missions -- were bugged by US intelligence just prior to the Iraq war.
Both countries were non-permanent members of the Security Council whose votes were being canvassed by the US for a resolution calling for a military attack on Iraq.

But Washington eventually dropped the resolution because it failed to generate the necessary nine votes -- and no vetoes-- for adoption by the Security Council. Mexico's former UN Ambassador Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, was quoted as saying: "Yes, there was spying. The United States has always used spying to anticipate decisions of other countries and to try to rope them in."

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