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Newsmax has leaned that British U.N. ambassador Sir Emyr Jones Parry was summoned to a private meeting by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan last week. While not officially explaining the reason for the ad hoc "get together," diplomatic sources say it was to "discuss" the allegations made by former UK-Blair cabinet member Claire Short that MI 6 (UK intelligence) had been spying on private meetings within Annan's office at U.N. headquarters. Word around the U.N. complex is that a security sweep of Annan's offices and the floors directly beneath and above them, recently turned up several "items of interest," so claim...

CLARE SHORT, the former British cabinet minister who last week accused British Prime Minister Tony Blair of spying on U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, is said by members of her own party to have boasted long before the Iraq war that she would one day resign from the government and “bring (Blair) down with her.” Last year she resigned from Parliament after accusing Blair of having planned the Iraq war in secret meetings that excluded her. Then last week she made her spying allegations. If true, they would prove one thing: There is at least one country that listens to...

LONDON, Feb 28: Former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said on Saturday he suspected the United States bugged his office and home in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, but had no hard evidence. Describing such behaviour as "disgusting", Mr Blix told Britain's Guardian newspaper in an interview: "It feels like an intrusion into your integrity in a situation when you are actually on the same side." His allegation came on top of a diplomatic row sparked this week when former British minister Clare Short said Britain bugged UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's office as London and Washington tried...

In the run-up to last year's Iraq war, there was one conversation that everyone wanted to hear: that between Kofi Annan and the Iraqi deputy prime minister. Con Coughlin reportsThey were known as the swinging six, the unlikely collection of countries that, in the frantic days preceding the war in Iraq, held the deciding vote on whether the UN security council would pass a second resolution authorising military action.For a two-week period in late February and early March last year, the governments of Mexico, Chile, Pakistan, Cameroon, Angola and Guinea found themselves the focus of one of the most intense...

UN bugging scandal widens BBCFriday, 27 February, 2004The former UN chief weapons inspector in Iraq, Richard Butler, says his phone calls at the United Nations were bugged during his tenure from 1997 to 1999... Mr Butler said he was bugged by the Americans, British, French and Russians... He said that if he needed to make a private call to his contacts, he would leave the UN building in New York and either go to a busy cafe or walk in Central Park. Meanwhile ABC reporter Andrew Fowler said he had been told by Australian intelligence contacts that Hans Blix...

Chief UN weapons inspector believes he was bugged The United Nations spying row widened yesterday when its former weapons inspector, Hans Blix, told the Guardian he suspected both his UN office and his home in New York were bugged in the run-up to the Iraq war. In an exclusive interview, Mr Blix said he expected to be bugged by the Iraqis, but to be spied upon by the US was a different matter. He described such behaviour as "disgusting", adding: "It feels like an intrusion into your integrity in a situation when you are actually on the same side." He...

Australia was privy to the phone-tapping operation on the United Nations figures Kofi Annan and Hans Blix before the Iraq war, receiving transcripts under the intelligence-sharing arrangement with the US and Britain. And the bugging was almost certainly undertaken - at least in part - by spy satellites linked with the Pine Gap relay station outside Alice Springs, an intelligence source told the Herald. A diplomatic scandal has erupted over the bugging, and yesterday the former UN weapons inspector Richard Butler revealed he was the victim of clandestine phone taps and surveillance when he was working in Iraq. The Foreign...

"We screwed up, this is a big problem for U.N. Security." So confided a senior U.N. Security official to NewsMax's Stewart Stogel when asked to react to reports that British Intelligence had been monitoring supposedly private conversations within the personal office of Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The allegation about the UK spying came from Claire Short, a former cabinet member of Prime Minister Tony Blair. In order to substantiate her allegations, Short claimed she could quote from private conversations between Annan and other officials which did not involve any UK officials. It is unclear how long the eavesdropping had been going...