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from today's Independent:
MI6 officers worked in Iraq as UN inspectors
MI6 officers worked under cover in Iraq as part
of the United Nations teams of arms inspectors
looking for chemical and biological weapons, an
Independent investigation has revealed. The
disclosure follows admissions that US spies had
worked in the Unscom teams.
By Paul Lashmar and David Usborne in New
York
Sources in Whitehall and at the UN in New York
say MI6 first infiltrated the UN Weapons
Inspectorate soon after it was set up in 1991.
"A number of officers were asked if they were
interested in the posting. One officer joined for a
period," said a source. Some officers are thought
to have been rotated through the teams.
Norman Baker, a Liberal Democrat MP, has put
down a series of questions for Robin Cook, the
Foreign Secretary, and the Defence Secretary,
George Robertson, due to be answered today, on
whether British intelligence officers were involved
in Unscom.
He said last night: "I would be very, very angry if
the independence and integrity of the Unscom
was compromised in this way. To include MI6
and Ministry of Defence intelligence staff
deliberately in the UN teams is to undermine the
UN itself."
Unscom teams were recruited from many states,
usually chosen for a specialisation in areas of
nuclear, chemical and biological warfare and
communications.
The inspectors found that Iraq had a far more
elaborate concealment system than had been
supposed.
Unscom decided it needed to break the Iraqi wall
of secrecy and turned to the intelligence
communities of several countries, notably the US,
Britain and Israel. They supplied Unscom with
experts in espionage - that is, spies.
Earlier this month some American newspapers,
citing anonymous US officials, reported that
intelligence ostensibly gleaned by the weapons
inspectors had been passed to Washington for its
own use. Some of the information, they said, had
been used to identify targets in last month's British
and American attacks on Iraq.
Most controversial have been reports that the US
supplied Unscom with an eavesdropping device
to tap Iraqi officers' communications. Sources say
the US demanded overall control of the machine
and made sure all data received was shown only
to experts from a narrow club of states. Explicitly
barred were Israel, France and Russia. Those
with full access reportedly came from just four
countries: the US, Australia, New Zealand and
Britain.
British Unscom members were recruited by the
Foreign Office, which said: "We don't comment
on intelligence matters." But The Independent has
established that the British group included
intelligence officers, using diplomatic cover to
gather intelligence independently.
Asked by The Independent for a list of British
inspectors, the Foreign Office and Unscom both
refused.
"We do not have the staff available to compile
such a list," said the Unscom spokesman, Euan
Dungannon, in New York. A Foreign Office
spokesman said: "We do not have such a list."
A US F-15 fighter attacked an Iraqi missile
installation in the northern no-fly zone yesterday.
A Pentagon spokesman said the F-15 fired in
self-defence after aircraft enforcing the no-fly
zone were tracked by Iraqi radar. There was no
damage to US aircraft, he said.
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