Sydney — Former United Nations chief weapons inspector Richard Butler said he was “well aware” that his telephone calls were being monitored during his tenure, as he weighed into the debate surrounding allegations Britain spied on the UN before the Iraq war.
Mr. Butler said Friday that while he was in charge of investigating Iraq's weapons programs he was forced to go for walks in New York's Central Park for confidential discussions with his contacts, because the phones in his office at the UN headquarters were bugged.
“Of course I was (bugged),” he told Australian Broadcasting Corp. (ABC) radio. “I was well aware of it. 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.”
Butler, the UN's chief weapons inspector in Iraq from 1997 to 1999, said at least four permanent members of the UN Security Council monitored his calls — the United States, Britain, France and Russia.
His comments came after an Australian intelligence analyst told the ABC that the phone of the UN's most recent weapons inspector, Hans Blix, was tapped whenever he was in Iraq hunting for banned weapons and the information was shared between the United States, Britain and its allies.
The revelations were prompted by accusations on Thursday by former British cabinet minister Clare Short that Britain spied on UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in the build up to the Iraq war. She said she had read transcripts of Mr. Annan's conversations while she was a member of the government.
The UN said any bugging of Mr. Annan's office would be illegal and should end immediately.
ABC radio cited an unnamed intelligence source at the Australian intelligence agency, the Office of National Assessments, who claimed that Mr. Blix's cellphone was monitored and his conversations recorded while he was in Iraq prior to the war last year.
“That's what I'm told, specifically 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 U.K. and also New Zealand,” ABC investigative reporter Andrew Fowler said, citing his intelligence contacts. He did not say who tapped Mr. Blix's phone.
Australia is a close ally of Britain and the United States and the three countries shared intelligence in the lead-up to last year's invasion of Iraq. Canberra also dispatched troops to take part in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Steve Ingram, a spokesman for Attorney General Philip Ruddock, who is ultimately responsible for security and intelligence matters, refused comment.
“We don't make it a practice of commenting on what we might and might not have seen in relation to intelligence matters,” he told The Associated Press.
Mr. Blix, 75, who headed the UN inspectors from 2000 to mid-2003, was in Iraq for months before the war looking for evidence that Saddam Hussein was developing a weapons program.
No weapons of mass destruction have been found.
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