BRITAIN on Thursday denied that five of its officials who were told to leave the Democratic Republic of the Congo are spies. London said the men had been working on contingency planning for a possible evacuation of its embassy in the capital, Kinshasa. “These people were not spies. Their purpose was wholly innocent and we would have been guilty of irresponsibility had those plans not been put forward,” junior Foreign Minister Tony Lloyd told British radio. The five British men — one diplomat and four officials sent from London, as well as a US official, were due to fly to Britain on Thursday after Kinshasa ordered them out on Wednesday.