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Newspaper: British leaker is not likely to be prosecuted

A British intelligence official accused of leaking US plans to spy on UN Security Council delegations in the run-up to the Iraq war is likely to have legal proceedings against her dropped, a report said yesterday.

The charges against translator Katharine Gun, 29, will not be pursued so as to avoid potential embarrassment to the British government, The Guardian said, citing unnamed sources.

Gun was due to have appeared Monday at the Old Bailey criminal court in London to enter her plea on charges of disclosing intelligence information without authorization, but the hearing was postponed until next week.

She was sacked from the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Britain's electronic intelligence monitoring center, in June, two months after The Observer exposed a memo from US intelligence asking for GCHQ's help in spying on six UN Security Council member states.

The six -- Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria, Guinea and Pakistan -- each wielded crucial votes on UN resolutions intended to green-light the US and British invasion of Iraq that took place in March.

According to The Guardian, Gun has said she will plead not guilty to leaking secrets because her actions were justified in trying to prevent the deaths of British and Iraqi troops in an "illegal war."

As part of her defense, she would seek disclosure of confidential information on the legality of the war issued to the British government before the conflict by its top legal advisor, Attorney General Peter Goldsmith.

Prime Minister Tony Blair and other ministers have always insisted Goldsmith backed the war's legality, but his reasoning has never been released.

According to The Guardian, the government would most likely refuse to release the advice, allowing Gun's lawyers to argue their client could therefore not get a fair trial.

The long delay in bringing Gun to trial indicated that there had been divisions between GCHQ and the government over the wisdom of the case, The Guardian added.

In a report last Sunday, The Observer said the joint British and US spying operation scuppered a last-ditch initiative to avert the invasion of Iraq within the UN.

Earlier this month the paper had reported that Gun, a Mandarin Chinese expert, was thought to have become involved as part of plans to target China, a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
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