Mexico demands answers on alleged UK, US spying

Mexico sent a letter to Britain and the US asking them to explain recent accusations that they spied on countries before the Iraq war, and Mexico's former UN ambassador -- who said he had been spied on -- called on Mexico to file a formal complaint with the UN secretary general.

In a statement released late Wednesday night, Mexico's Foreign Relations Department said it had expressed "concern about the alleged espionage case, which, if real, would affect the confidence that should exist between nations."

The letter also asked both countries for an answer to the accusations.

But Mexico's former UN ambassador Adolfo Aguilar Zinser said Thursday night that the letter wasn't enough, and called on his government to sponsor a UN complaint against the US for violating its host-country agreement with the UN.

"I think that we should be prepared to do that ... because we need to uphold international law," Aguilar Zinser told reporters. "They are violating the UN headquarters covenant."

"The United Nations should send a letter to the US State Department asking for an explanation, and requesting that no US agency be allowed to operate outside the covenant."

On Tuesday, Mexico's UN ambassador, Enrique Berruga, said Mexico had not confirmed that it was spied on, but it was seeking answers.

But Aguilar Zinser said circumstantial evidence indicated there was spying.

"It was very obvious to the countries involved in the discussion on Iraq that we were being observed and that our communications were probably being tapped," he said.

"The information was being gathered to benefit the United States. I think there was a spying operation on our telephone conversations, our cellular phones, and probably our e-mails as well," Aguilar Zinser said.

He described a meeting of six nations to work out a compromise Iraq resolution in early March. "Only the people in that room knew what that document said," he recalled. "Early the next morning, I received a call from a US diplomat saying the United States found that text totally unacceptable."

British US officials have declined to comment. "We don't comment on allegations concerning intelligence matters," US State Department spokeswoman Brenda Greenberg said on Thursday night.

Aguilar Zinser added that he told Mexico's government of the potential security concerns, but they did nothing.

Mexico's Relations Department on Thursday declined to comment on the accusations by Aguilar Zinser, who was forced to resign from his post in November after saying the US treats Mexico like its "back yard."

The statement came a day after Chile said the telephones at its UN mission were tapped in the run-up to the Iraq war.

Chile Mexico, then members of the UN Security Council, had wavered on whether they were going to support the war. In the end, both came out against it.

A year ago, the London newspaper The Observer reported that the US National Security Agency had begun extra eavesdropping of key UN Security Council members at the time, including Chile.

It published a Jan. 31 memo that said the NSA had begun a "surge" of extra eavesdropping on officials from Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria, Guinea and Pakistan, all key Security Council members at the time.

The memo allegedly asked the British listening agency for help bugging the delegates' home and office telephones.

A former translator at the communications headquarters, Katharine Gun, has acknowledged leaking the memo and has been charged with breaking state secrecy laws.

Gun the disclosure was justified because it "exposed serious illegality and wrongdoing on the part of the US government."