British Prime Minister Tony Blair is in deep trouble over a new spy scandal involving the UN, reports Alistair Alexander from London Poor Tony Blair. Just when the British prime minister thinks he's finally out of the dense political woods over Iraq, the woods now appear to be chasing after him. After months of turmoil surrounding the intelligence he used to justify the war on Iraq, attention has suddenly switched to whether the government was spying illegally on the United Nations and, even more damagingly, to the entire legal basis of the war -- or lack of it. Last week's torment for the British prime minister began with the collapse of the trial of Katharine Gun, an intelligence officer who leaked a top secret e-mail she received from the US National Security Agency. The e-mail demanded British assistance in spying on UN Security Council members in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq to further US interests. Shocked by the illegality of the request, Ms Gun leaked the e-mail to a newspaper, which ran the story just days before military action commenced. Ms Gun was charged under Britain's Official Secrets Act, the catchall law that makes revealing any government secret, however trivial, a serious criminal offence. But last week the prosecution mysteriously dropped the case after advice from the attorney general, the government's most senior legal advisor. The momentous significance of the trial's collapse was lost on nobody. Ms Gun's legal team was using the defence of "necessity". That is to say, she broke the Official Secrets Act to prevent a greater crime from taking place -- namely, an illegal war against Iraq. So if this case did go to trial, it wouldn't so much be Ms Gun in the dock, as the war itself. Indeed, it was only when Ms Gun's defence team requested the government's full legal advice on military action that the prosecution withdrew its case. Ms Gun's lawyers suspect that the legal justification the government relied on is so weak that it wouldn't stand up to the scrutiny of a courtroom. And, crucially, they were convinced the government position when Ms Gun leaked the e-mail was that a war without UN backing would be illegal and it was only much later that the government's advice changed to support a war without the UN after all. Who was it that provided the government's legal advice? Why, none other than Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general who prevented Ms Gun's trial from taking place. This hugely damaging political storm became a hurricane, however, when ex-minister Clare Short was interviewed about the Gun case on BBC radio. Asked whether it was possible that the UK would spy on the United Nations, Ms Short casually revealed that, when minister, she would receive transcripts of Kofi Annan's private telephone calls as a matter of almost mundane routine. "In fact," she added, "I have had conversations with Kofi in the run-up to war thinking: 'Oh dear, there will be a transcript of this and people will see what he and I are saying'." Ms Short was, of course, the minister who resigned over the war after it had finished, having been persuaded by the prime minister not to resign before. She has made little secret of her wish to see Tony Blair resign. But for a former minister to break the Official Secrets Act live on radio is -- it is fair to say -- unprecedented. Tony Blair attacked Ms Short as "totally irresponsible". But when pressed on whether the claims were true, he refused to confirm or deny. "I'm not going to comment on the work of our security services. Do not take that as an indication that the allegations made by Clare Short are true." But no one seriously doubts Ms Short's claims are true -- except desperate government ministers, of course. Espionage is a part of everyday life at the UN. A procession of former senior UN figures, including Hans Blix and Boutros Boutros Ghali, were quick to add that they were bugged also. Clare Short's explosive corroboration of Katharine Gun's leaked e-mail over spying on the UN is significant for two key reasons. Firstly, while many argue that "everybody knew the UN was bugged", the fact that a former minister categorically confirms it makes the issue simply impossible to ignore. Secondly, such dubious activities might be tolerated when the outcome is broadly in keeping with the public interest, but when the outcome is a deeply divisive war it is hardly surprising that subterfuge at the UN is regarded as beyond the pale. The issue surrounding the legality of the war is, if anything, far more serious. While the government released a summary of their legal position just before the war began, they have refused to publish the full advice of the attorney general, claiming it is against "long-standing convention" to do so. There are good reasons for this convention: a government can only be sure to receive full and candid advice if that advice remains private. But governments can break conventions if they feel it is expedient to do so. Tony Blair has broken quite a few in his time, not least by releasing the attorney general's summary. So why then does he feel so duty-bound by convention not to publish the full advice? Here, too, Ms Short added weight to suspicions that the government's legal position on the war was, at best, questionable. "The more I think about it the more fishy I feel it was," she said of the legal advice presented to ministers. "It came very, very late, he [Lord Goldsmith] came to the cabinet ... with two sides of A4; no discussion permitted. We know already that the Foreign Office legal advisers had disagreed and one of them had said there was no authority for war." The more this legal advice is scrutinised the murkier it looks. The government's justification essentially rests on Resolution 678; the resolution that justified military action against Iraq in 1991. Most experts in international law agree that the British government is skating on thin legal ice with its position. Relying on a 12-year-old resolution designed for a completely different purpose smacks of clutching at straws. Besides, if the war was legal anyway, why did Britain go to such extraordinary -- and futile -- efforts to secure a new resolution on the eve of war? Suspicions that Lord Goldsmith changed his position at the last minute are looking increasingly well founded. And, as Liberal Democrat Sir Menzies Campbell puts it, the pressure on the government to release the full advice is beginning to assume "an inexorable quality". Clearly, then, with the Gun case and now Clare Short's claims, the legality of British conduct at the UN and the legality of the war have become lethally entwined for the prime minister. In both cases, by relying on draconian secrecy laws and vague constitutional conventions to protect itself, the government finds itself stranded in dark and profoundly dangerous political territory. If the war was illegal, Tony Blair could be in very hot water indeed. As Britain is a signatory to the International Criminal Court, it is conceivable that Mr Blair could be charged with war crimes. Only just, mind. More immediately the government's predicament is more political than legal, however. After the prolonged purgatory of the Hutton Inquiry and its final report, Tony Blair's coterie of advisers could at last draw a line under Iraq and "move on" to other matters. After last week's furore the penny might have finally dropped that Iraq will haunt Mr Blair for the rest of his days in office. The issue is like a festering tumour; it can flare up without warning at any moment, debilitating the government for weeks at a time. Move on? Dream on more like.
