Tony Blair:
"There is absolutely no precedent for any former minister talking about foreign intelligence operations in this way."
Clare Short (ex-cabinet minister, resigned after war at protest of lack of UN involvement): "Either he has to say it's true, we are bugging Kofi Annan's office, which he doesn't want to say; or he's got to say it's not true, and he'd be telling a lie; or he's got to say something pompous about national security."
Boutros Boutros-Ghali (ex-UNSG): "I was not surprised, because from the first day...they told me, 'Beware, your office is bugged, your residence is bugged, and it is a tradition that the member states that have the technical capacity to bug will do it without hesitation.'"
Sir Crispin Tickell (Britain's UN envoy, 1987-1990): "If there is a policy question which comes up about which you are uneasy, there are different ways in which you can go round and say I am very unhappy about this...You can move me from my job or you can do whatever it is...But your prime loyalty is to your employer and, indeed, to the interests of the country."
Robin Cook (ex-foreign secretary, resigned in protest against war): "This is part of Clare's political agenda to undermine the prime minister, and it is damaging both to the government and to the party which gave her all the privileges she enjoyed in government."
She should now put up or shut up."
