Pakistan flays UK over spy operation

Pakistan yesterday flayed the British government's failure to provide adequate information about a reported spy operation at its high commission in London by the British MI-5 intelligence agency.

"There is a lot of consternation and anger about it in Pakistan," Foreign Office spokesman Masood Khan told a press briefing. He said people here had been very surprised and did not expect an espionage operation at the mission of a friendly country and a close ally in the war on terror.

"We hope the British government will cooperate with us. The ball is in their court. They must tell us what happened."

He said Pakistan had asked the British government whether it had authorised the alleged operation or was it was a rogue act by the MI-5 and Scotland Yard. If the operation did take place it was a violation of the Geneva Convention, he said, adding that an inquiry had been launched soon after the report was published in the Sunday Times on November 2. He said Pakistan had taken up the issue with Britain at various levels and Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri had also raised it during a recent meeting with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

Both MI-5 and Scotland Yard work under the British government and they have to make a determination and inform Pakistan. "We hope that the British government will come up with a response."

"We have beefed up security at the Pakistan High Commission and at our consulates outside London," Khan said.

The Sunday Times report said that the MI-5 had made a botched effort to spy on the London embassy of one of its allies in the global war on terrorism through a contractor renovating the mission's building. The original report did not identify the embassy but later the newspaper quoted an unidentified Pakistani Foreign Ministry official as saying it was the Pakistani embassy.

The Times said the construction worker volunteered to bug the offices for MI-5, then arranged for agents to have unrestricted access to the embassy. Afterwards MI-5 infiltrated the embassy, stole codes used for sending secret messages and began planning to plant listening devices and removed documents.

The construction worker reportedly confessed to his role to the embassy staff because he feared that MI-5 had put him in danger.

The Sunday Times said he had since written about the alleged operation to the chairman of the House of Commons intelligence and security committee, the US embassy in London and the targeted embassy.

The paper did not say when the alleged spying occurred but reported that the renovation at the embassy began in 2001 and construction was still under way.