Annan Summons British Envoy on Bugging Scandal

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called the British ambassador to a meeting on Thursday after his spokesman said he wanted a fuller explanation of alleged British bugging of his office.

The meeting, set on Wednesday, falls a week after Clare Short, Britain's former international development secretary, disclosed that British intelligence agents spied on Annan ahead of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq last March.

U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard responded at the time by saying the bugging, if true, violated international law and should immediately be stopped.

Eckhard later added, "I think it's probably safe to say that he would like a fuller explanation," when asked if Annan was waiting for the British government to contact him to offer an explanation or assurances there would be no more spying.

Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry had telephoned Annan, on behalf of Prime Minister Tony Blair, immediately after the bugging allegations became public. But diplomatic sources said their initial conversation had not directly addressed the bugging issue.

The world body was clearly startled by Short's claims as she was a high-ranking official at the time the alleged bugging took place. Short resigned from the government after the war.

Short told BBC radio she had read some of the transcripts of the bugging of Annan's office, on the 38th floor of the U.N. complex in Manhattan facing East River. "In the case of Kofi's office, it was being done for some time," she said.

A British translator had earlier leaked a top-secret U.S. document to the media seeking London's help in bugging U.N. Security Council members in the run-up to the Iraq war.

The former U.N. ambassadors from Mexico and Chile recently alleged their offices near U.N. headquarters in New York had been bugged a year ago. Both nations at the time were members of the U.N. Security Council and had misgivings about an invasion of Iraq.