Former UN chief weapons inspector Richard Butler said yesterday that at least four countries bugged his conversations as he held delicate negotiations on disarming Iraq.
Responding to former British minister Clare Short's allegation that listening devices had been planted in the offices of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Butler said he was certain he was bugged in his time at the UN.
PHOTO: EPA
"Of course I was, I was well aware of it," he told ABC radio.
"How did I know? Because those who did it would come to me and show me the recordings that they had made on others to help me do my job disarming Iraq.
"They would say, `We're just here to help you,' and they would never show me any recordings they had made on me," he said.
Butler, executive chairman of the UN Special Commission to Disarm Iraq from 1997 to 1999, told of diplomats going to great lengths to keep conversations under wraps because they believed the UN headquarters in New York was full of spies.
"If I really truly wanted to have a sensitive conversation with somebody ... I was reduced to having to go either to a noisy cafeteria in the basement of the UN where there was so much noise around and then whisper, or literally take a walk in Central Park," he said.
Butler said he was bugged by the Americans, British, French and Russians.
"I knew it from other sources, I was utterly confident that I was bugged by at least four permanent members of the Security Council," he said.
Butler said the allegations of bugging in Annan's office showed international relations could be a dirty game.
"If ordinary people knew how dishonest the game is they would mightily object," he said.
Meanwhile, the ABC reported that the country's intelligence officials had seen transcripts of mobile phone conversations involving Hans Blix, another former UN chief weapons inspector, that were supplied by either British or US intelligence services.
"Each time he entered Iraq his phone was targeted and recorded and the transcripts were then made available to the United States, Australia, Canada, the UK and also New Zealand," ABC journalist Andrew Fowler said, citing unnamed sources.
Prime Minister John Howard refused to comment, saying it was his policy to neither confirm nor deny intelligence matters.
Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd said he would be concerned if Annan was the target of a covert operation.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
RSS