Britain Blocks Mossad Replacement Over Passport Theft

Truthdig
May 5, 2010

The United Kingdom will not allow an official representative of Israel’s security services into the country, according to an Israeli report, until Israel promises, in writing, not to abuse British passports. Israel has so far refused, the report said.

The previous Mossad representative was expelled after British passports were reportedly used by Israeli agents to carry out an assassination in Dubai.

Ynet News via the Guardian:

UK ‘blocking’ Mossad return to London

Official reportedly prevented from taking up embassy post after Israel refuses to commit itself not to misuse British passports

 

Ian Black, Middle East editor
The Guardian, Wednesday 5 May 2010

Britain has refused to allow Israel’s Mossad secret service to send a representative back to the country’s London embassy following the row over the killing of a Hamas operative by agents using forged UK passports.

Israel’s Yediot Aharonot newspaper reported yesterday that the Foreign Office is digging in its heels because Israel is refusing to commit itself not to misuse British passports in future clandestine operations.

Neither Britain nor Israel gave any details of the embassy official who was ordered to leave the country in March after an investigation by the Serious Organised Crime Agency showed that the Mossad was behind the passport theft.

But the official was understood to be an intelligence officer who was known to the UK authorities and worked as official liaison with Britain’s MI6. There was no suggestion the officer was personally involved in the passports affair.

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As Britain Votes, Economic Clouds Hover

Posters in London on Wednesday expressed anger over perceived economic injustice, with experts predicting hard times ahead

By JOHN F. BURNS and LANDON THOMAS Jr. | NYT | Published: May 5, 2010

LONDON — Even with rioters on the streets of Athens and the 16 countries using the euro threatened with mounting turmoil, the economy remained the most frequently — and least candidly — discussed topic here as the three main parties entered the last hours of a monthlong general election campaign.

Much of the wrangling centered on arguments about which party was hiding most from the voters on the true state of the economy and its plans for dealing with it. With government deficits in Britain second in Europe only to those of Greece, some analysts even suggested that this might be a good election to lose.

But one conclusion seemed clear: Whoever wins will be forced to make deep and unpopular cuts, a task made all the more difficult if the closely contested election produces, as many commentators have forecast, a hung Parliament or a fragile coalition arrangement that might delay important economic decisions.

“This is a ticking time bomb,” said Ruth Lea, an economic adviser at the Arbuthnot Banking Group who worked at the Treasury in London in 1976 when Britain, in its worst financial crisis since World War II, was forced to go to the International Monetary Fund for assistance. “If the next government does not come to grips with this, the I.M.F. will have to come in. I remember, it was very, very humiliating.”

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