U.S. Spying Worldwide May Come Under U.N. Scrutiny

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/10/26



U.S. Spying Worldwide May Come Under U.N. Scrutiny
by Thalif Deen
Published on Saturday, October 26, 2013 by Inter Press Service

When Clare Short, Britain’s former minister for international development, revealed that British intelligence agents had spied on former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan by bugging his office just before the disastrous U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the U.N. chief was furious that his discussions with world leaders had been compromised.

And as she talked to Annan on the 38th floor of the U.N. Secretariat building, Short told the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), she was thinking, “Oh dear, there will be a transcript of this, and people will see what he and I are saying.”

Nearly 10 years later, the accusing finger is now pointed towards the United States, not Britain.

James A. Paul, who monitored the politics of the United Nations for over 19 years as executive director of the New York-based Global Policy Forum, told IPS U.S. electronic spying at the U.N. is a logical part of the worldwide espionage programme by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).