UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has announced he will launch an inquiry into allegations that British secret service agents spied on foreign governments at two consecutive international climate summits in 2009 and 2010.<\/p>\n
Speaking to Danish television, Ban Ki-moon said the allegations were a UN issue, because the climate summits are UN conferences.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll diplomatic information is inviolable. If there has been any breach \u2026 they should be investigated. UN information should be protected in its entire confidentiality,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The presentation, disclosed by former NSA senior analyst and whistleblower Edward Snowden, revealed it became a \u201cserious intelligence priority\u201d for Britain\u2019s clandestine intelligence services to spy on negotiations brokered an international UN summits from 2007.<\/p>\n
The 23-page PowerPoint presentation was first published by Swedish site Dagbladet Information.<\/p>\n
The file entitled, \u201cSupporting HMG\u2019s (Her Majesty\u2019s Government) Climate Change Ambitions,\u201d states a GCHQ secret service official frequented the high profile UN gatherings, also attended by an array of international leaders.<\/p>\n
The document indicates the spy reported to Downing Street, the foreign secretary, diplomats, the Department for International Development (DfID), the business department, the Treasury and MI5.<\/p>\n
According to the file, the GCHQ official was planted in the UK delegation because such a cover would facilitate direct access to other state\u2019s delegates along with useful documentation they were in possession of.<\/p>\n
The spy\u2019s remit, as outlined in the document, was to discern states\u2019 climate policy leanings, report on how far they were prepared to broker on issues, uncover if foreign delegates poised at the UN negotiation table were receiving orders from their respective governments, and relay this information back to British officials to bolster Britain\u2019s leverage at the climate talks.<\/p>\n
While the talks failed spectacularly in 2009, the UK secret service operation was reportedly a success. States were expected to wrap up years of tenuous negotiations with a landmark cross-border agreement to curb carbon emissions.<\/p>\n
Such actions could amount to a violation of international law, because UN climate conferences are officially declared to be UN territory throughout the negotiations.<\/p>\n
Snowden\u2019s disclosure could cause embarrassment to current leftist Labour Party leader Ed Miliband, who held the position of energy and climate change secretary in 2009. Miliband also led the British delegation at the UN Climate Summit in 2009.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has announced he will launch an inquiry into allegations that British secret service agents spied on foreign governments at two consecutive international climate summits in 2009 and 2010. Speaking to Danish television, Ban Ki-moon said the allegations were a UN issue, because the climate summits are UN conferences. \u201cAll diplomatic … Continue reading “UN to investigate GCHQ, MI5 spying at climate talks”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,123],"tags":[3515,10475,10476,2990,3408,7141,2778,2956,3355,1415],"class_list":["post-16727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-world","tag-ban-ki-moon","tag-climate-talks","tag-ed-miliband","tag-edward-snowden","tag-gchq","tag-leftists","tag-mi5","tag-spying","tag-surveillance","tag-un"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16727"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16728,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16727\/revisions\/16728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}