New twist in spy scandal

The bugging scandal at the United Nations deepened today with sensational new allegations.

The UN's chief weapons inspector Hans Blix and his predecessor Richard Butler were both routinely spied on, it was claimed.

Dr Blix's mobile phone was said to have been monitored every time he entered Iraq. The charges increased the pressure on Tony Blair following allegations that British spies bugged the office of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

The UN denounced the operation as illegal and highly damaging and demanded that it stop.

Today's fresh charges came from Australian radio, citing intelligence sources in that country. They said transcripts of Dr Blix's calls were circulated among the western allies, including Britain.

"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 UK and also New Zealand," said the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's investigative reporter Andrew Fowler. A spokesman for Australia's intelligence supremo, the Attorney General Philip Ruddock, refused to confirm or deny the charge.

He said: "We don't make it a practice of commenting on what we might and might not have seen in relation to intelligence matters."

The row opened up by claims from former cabinet minister Clare Short continued to snowball today.

Mr Butler said he was "well aware" that his phone calls were being monitored during his posting. He claimed he was forced to hold key talks out in the open in Central Park because he knew his phone at UN headquarters was tapped.

Asked whether he was bugged, he replied: "Of course I was. 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."

The charges opened up a whole new range of questions for Mr Blair, already under massive pressure over the allegations from Ms Short.

She told Radio4's Today programme that she was "absolutely" certain that Britain's intelligence services had monitored the conversations of Mr Annan and that she had seen transcripts during her time as International Development Secretary.

The Prime Minister's problems were somewhat eased by the claim from Mr Butler, chief weapons inspector in Iraq from 1997-99, that he was being bugged not only by the British but by most of the key members of the UN Security Council.

"I was utterly confident I was being listened to by the Americans, British, the French and the Russians," Mr Butler said. "And they also had people on my staff reporting what I was trying to do privately."

Despite suggestions that all the key players were equally guilty, the Prime Minister was forced into a frantic attempt to mend fences with the UN.

Britain's UN Ambassador Emyr Jones-Parry called Mr Annan on Mr Blair's behalf last night. There were suggestions that the Prime Minister would make a personal call today.

Neither the UN nor Britain would say whether the ambassador had owned up to the charge from Ms Short or denied it.

But the Secretary-General's official spokesman protested that "such activities would undermine the integrity and confidential nature of diplomatic exchanges." And he went on: "Those who speak to the Secretary-General are entit led to assume that their exchanges are confidential. The Secretary-General, therefore, would want this practice stopped, if indeed it exists."

Mr Blair, while saying that he would stick by the rule that Governments did not comment on security matters, repeatedly stressed that the security services had done nothing in breach of domestic or international law.

The Prime Minister, in a speech to a Labour Party audience today, was planning to home in on the domestic agenda. But he found that effort - yet again - derailed by the fallout from the war on Iraq.

Mr Blair and his government faced a linked crisis over the working of the Official Secrets Act. That law was left in tatters not only by the revelation from Ms Short but by the decision not to prosecute Katharine Gun, a 29-year-old former intelligence officer at the GCHQ listening centre.

She walked free despite having leaked a top-secret email from the US National Security Agency requesting British aid to bug the UN offices of six members of the Security Council.