BRITAIN STORIES/UPDATE

Political damage

Asked if that meant legal action should be taken against Ms Short under the official secrets act, or whether she should be kicked out of the Labour party, he said he would have to "reflect" on the issues. But in this particular political game, Ms Short's future is little more than a footnote. What both her remarks and the collapse of the case against GCHQ whistle-blower Katharine Gun have ensured is that the row over the war and its legitimacy is back on the top of the agenda. And it is still that issue which has the potential to do the prime minister serious political damage. His refusal to make any comment on the affairs, over and above insisting the intelligence services would never break the law, is his attempt to put the lid back onto it. Several times during his press conference he was asked to address the generalities of whether the intelligence services should spy on friends like Kofi Annan, or the UN. And each time he insisted he would not get drawn into discussing the details of intelligence operations because that, too, would be irresponsible and dangerous.

Soon subside

And, of course, that meant he refused to comment on whether or not the allegations were true, or whether the services would ever carry out such operations. Similarly, he refused to be drawn on the abandoned court case which has again raised claims that the war may have been illegal and that fact was about to be revealed during the case. The prime minister denied that and continued to express his unbending certainty about the rightness of the war. And he must know that his refusal to get drawn on these hugely sensitive issues will allow speculation to run rife. He said so himself during his press conference. But he clearly calculates that will be a short term setback and that, with no extra fuel to pour on the fire, the flames will soon subside. The real long-term danger for the prime minister is that all this again feeds into the general public perception of how and why Britain was taken to war. In effect, he has asked voters to trust him when he says the intelligence services would never get up to anything illegal. He said he believed her allegations were "completely irresponsible" and regretted the way she had dragged the security services "through the mud". "People who put them in the firing line like this, I really do not have a great deal of respect for," he said. He was addressing his monthly news conference after Ms Short's remarks.

Reports

The former international development secretary said she had read transcripts of some of the conversations UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had had in the run up to war with Iraq. "The UK in this time was also getting spies on Kofi Annan's office and getting reports from him about what was going on," she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "These things are done and in the case of Kofi's office, it was being done for some time." Ms. Short said she had recalled thinking that people would be able to read transcripts of her own conversations with Mr. Annan.

Good job

Asked to confirm if British spies were instructed to carry out operations within the UN on people like Mr. Annan, she said: "Yes, absolutely." Quizzed about Ms. Short's comments during his monthly meeting with reporters at Downing Street, Mr. Blair said he did not have any plans to talk to his ex-minister. "I also haven't had an opportunity to consider any questions and issues to do with discipline," he said. But pressed further about Ms Short's future as an MP, Mr. Blair said: "These are issues that I will have to reflect upon. This has happened this morning. There will obviously be issues that arise." He said "to be fair", Ms Short had done a good job during her time as international development secretary - a post she quit after the UK went to war with Iraq.