Pakistan seeks to know whether Blair authorised mission bugging

Pakistan has asked the UK whether it was "rogue elements" within the British secret service or Prime Minister Tony Blair who personally authorised the bugging of its diplomatic mission in London.

Islamabad's query was conveyed to Britain's High Commissioner to Islamabad, Mark Lyall Grant, who was summoned to the Foreign Ministry on Wednesday to ask how and why electronic surveillance devices were planted in the lavish Pakistani High Commission building in London.

This follows last weekend's revealations that during extensive refurbishments carried out in the building in 2001, UK security agents planted bugging devices in closed circuit television units, within the internal telephone service and elsewhere in the embassy premises.

Furious Pakistani diplomats now want to know who authorised the surveillance measures.

The exposure of the bugging operation severely embarrassed Pakistani Foreign Minister Khursheed Kasuri who has just ended a week-long trip to the UK.

During his visit Kasuri defended his government's record in tackling Afghan-based terrorists, saying Islamabad is bearing the brunt of the international effort against them.

It was the UK's prestigious Sunday Times newspaper that exposed the bugging operation.

Although the Sunday Times did not specify the embassy involved, the game was given away by a number of vitalclues, including a description of the naval attache's office on the top floor of the building and the visa office in the basement.

Gulf News has learned that shortly before the newspaper went to press on Saturday night, the head of Britain's internal security service MI5 personally telephoned the newspaper in an unsuccessful attempt to try and stop the story's publication.

Old fashioned bugging or surveillance of foreign embasses has invoked memories of diplomatic exchanges between the West and the Soviet Union and its allies.

Less than 20 years ago Western and Soviet diplomats stationed in each other's capitals routinely assumed they were under 24 hour surveillance, as were their homes and offices.

But Pakistan in British eyes is officially deemed a friendly Commonwealth country and ally, albeit one that is ruled by a military dictator, and not subject to what could be perceived as hostile security screening.

The decision to turn the spotlight on Pakistan seems to have been prompted by concern that some UK based radicals of Pakistani origin have joined the ranks of Al Qaida, either in the border regions of Afghanistan or other conflict hot spots in the Middle East.

In its article the Sunday Times said the task of facilitating the bugging operation was given to a former MI5 agent, codenamed Notation, who has since confessed his role in the operation to the embassy. "It is likely that the Foreign Office will now have the embarrassing task of explaining the espionage operation to its ally", the newspaper article says.

It further claimed that MI5 took detailed plans and photographs of the diplomatic mission before working out how to plant bugs in the internal telephone system and inside a closed-circuit television camera in the office of a diplomat. One officer is even alleged to have pretended to be carrying out a search for hazardous materials to gain access to secure areas.

Meanwhile agent Notation received tens of thousands of pounds as cash payment from MI5. He was, according to the Sunday Times, also told by his handler that the entire operation had been authorised at the highest level with warrants being signed by Home Secretary David Blunkett.