The British ambassador to the United Nations has been summoned to a meeting on Thursday with the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, to discuss allegations that his office had been bugged by British intelligence, according to UN sources.
The meeting comes a week after the former international development secretary, Clare Short, stunned both the UN and the Blair government by announcing on BBC radio that she had seen transcripts of Annan’s intercepted conversations.
The British ambassador at the UN’s New York headquarters, Emyr Jones Parry, was in London at the time of Short’s allegations and telephoned Annan at Tony Blair’s request, but according to diplomatic sources, the conversation did not directly address the bugging issue.
It clearly did not satisfy Annan, whose spokesperson, Fred Eckhard, said: ”I think it’s probably safe to say that he would like a fuller explanation.”
Neither the British officials nor Eckhard would discuss the subject of today’s meeting but one senior UN source confirmed that it would deal with the bugging scandal.
”The UK has been very supportive of the UN, and probably everyone is doing this kind of thing,” the UN source said.
”But the secretary general believes this is not something he wants to look the other way on.
”His private position is his public position: ‘How am I going to be effective if every time I try to call someone the Brits or someone else are going to be listening in?’.”
A British official on Wednesday would say only that Jones Parry frequently met Annan in the course of his duties. The two met on Monday, but on a different matter.
Short’s allegations were an acute embarrassment for British diplomats at the UN, where they have generally argued Britain wields influence beyond its economic and military power.
The claims followed the government’s decision to drop charges against a former GCHQ translator, Katharine Gun, who had leaked a US request for help in bugging the offices of security council members.
The former ambassadors of Mexico and Chile have since announced that their offices near the UN were bugged a year ago, at a time when America and Britain were trying to persuade the security council to back the invasion of Iraq.
The UN’s former chief weapons inspector Hans Blix told The Guardian last week that he suspected both his UN office and his home in New York were bugged in the run-up to the Iraq war. – Guardian Unlimited Â