Irish diplomats wary of claims of spying on UN

But just exactly what those precautions are remain a secret.
“Security of communications is important, but it would be inappropriate of us to go into detail on our security arrangements,” an Irish UN spokesman said this week against a backdrop of uproar over revelations that British intelligence bugged the office of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
However, it is known that Irish diplomatic missions, including the UN post, are periodically checked for listening devices. This would have certainly taken place at one point during Ireland’s recent membership of the Security Council.
That two-year membership concluded at the end of 2002 and included the unanimous council vote, in November 2002, instructing Iraq to reveal if had weapons of mass destruction and, if so, surrender them.
The bugging of Annan’s office appears to have taken place in the early part of 2003, a few weeks after Ireland relinquished its Security Council seat.
The most bugged Irish diplomatic facility over the years, meanwhile, is likely the Irish embassy in London.
One diplomat who worked at the embassy in the British capital spoke of “clicking on the phone all the time.”
Another diplomat said that as a working rule, diplomats assumed that bugging was a fact of diplomatic life. “You can’t assume it’s secure,” the diplomat said, referring to consulates and embassies.
One typical precaution against eavesdropping is to not openly discuss certain sensitive issues and have documents dealing with the same issues delivered from one office to another by hand. This was particularly the case at the climax of Irish-British talks in the run-up to the 1985 Anglo-Irish accord.
The brouhaha over the bugging of the UN secretary general erupted after statements from former British cabinet minister Clare Short. Short told the BBC that Annan had been bugged on a regular basis in the run-up to last year’s invasion of Iraq and that transcripts of his conversations had been circulated at cabinet meetings. Short quit her ministerial post last year in a disagreement with Prime minister Tony Blair over the war.
Short has been outspoken on Northern Ireland over the years and her name has appeared on a loyalist death list.
The claims about bugging at the UN will come as no surprise to Irish officials charged with the Republic’s internal national security. A British television documentary five years ago alleged that the British domestic security agency, MI5, had tapped phone calls into and out of the Republic for a period of 10 years lasting up until 1998. The calls were tapped using a specially equipped 13-story tower in the Cheshire countryside.
Irish concern over phone tapping were raised with the British government by the Irish ambassador in London following the report, which appeared on the Britain’s Channel 4 network.