Spying Is Illegal: UN

©Lucio Joaõ Mascarenhas, February 28th., 2004.

Times of India, Bombay, February 28, 2004.

UN, Agencies: Reacting with restrained anger to allegations that British intelligence had spied on Secretary-General Kofi Annan in the run-up to the Iraq War, the UN on Friday said such an activity, if true, was illegal and must be stopped.

"We will be disappointed if this is true. Such activities will 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. It is considered illegal," chief UN Spokesman Fred Eckhard said, adding that Mr. Annan said the practice, if it did exist, must stop.

Former British cabinet minister Clare Short, who had resigned as Secretary for International Development protesting the UK's decision to join the US-led invasion of Iraq, claimed that Britain had spied on Annan in the run-up to the military action against Iraq.

In his reaction, UN Under Secretary-General Shashi Tharoor said, "All that we have got is media reports. But when that has been alleged by a senior former cabinet minister, someone whom we know and whom we have worked with, we have to take it seriously."

While Eckhard claimed that the Secretariat routinely took measures to guard against such invasions of privacy, veteran diplomats said everyone spied on everyone else at the UN. What was surprising, they said, was the need for the US and Britain to indulge in such activities as they could have easily got the information they wanted.

The UN may order an inquiry into the allegations as diplomats concede that some insiders with an access to secure areas may have been part of the operation.

In Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell declined to comment. "I have nothing to say. We never talk about intelligence matters of that nature in public," was all he said.

UN�s Hypocrisy

The UN is acting as if the UK and the US are merely provinces, and therefore recalcitrant and insubordinate when their intelligence arms spied on the UN.

In fact, what we are seeing here is an effort to stir up an unthinking hysteria against certain states — principally the USA and the UK, by building up on the unprincipled, brainless and ragtag anti-Gulf War II groups — in order to brainwash the masses of the world, and to build them into a stampede against the sovereignty of the UN�s member states; thereby to reduce these member states to mere provinces, and thereby to bring about a One World State and Administration — the UN, under its Secretary-General — through the backdoors.

All Freedom-loving people of the world should sit up and take notice of this criminal artifice and imposture by the UN and act to resist it, to publicize this daylight brigandage. It is time to put the UN into its place.

Perhaps, the UK and the USA will finally wake up now, and walk out of the UN completely. It would be interesting to see how long the World�s Greatest Gas Bag — the UN — can last without the USA�s indulgence and underwriting it!


Lucio Joaõ Mascarenhas
©Lucio Joaõ Mascarenhas, February 28th., 2004.

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