Reports in several American newspapers that the US used United Nations weapons inspections to spy on Iraq have been strongly denied by Mr Richard Butler, who heads the inspection operation, UNSCOM.
A report that the UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, is "alarmed" by US methods has also been dismissed by his spokesman, Mr Fred Eckhard. The report cited "confidants" and "an adviser" to Mr Annan.
A clearly angry Mr Butler told reporters on his way into UN headquarters the reports were "simply untrue".
Later, in a brief press conference, he amplified his denial of the reports in the Washington Post and the Boston Globe and warned reporters that "there is much in these articles which is wrong".
The Post reported that Mr Annan was "deeply alarmed" at the implications for the world organisation of evidence that the US has access to UNSCOM intelligence eavesdropping aimed at finding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
The newspaper quoted "an adviser" as saying that "the Secretary General has become aware of the fact that UNSCOM directly facilitated the creation of an intelligence collection system for the United States in violation of its mandate".
Mr Annan's spokesman, Mr Fred Eckhard, told reporters there was "no evidence of any kind" to back up the newspaper reports but "only rumours". He said Mr Annan "rejects the characterisation of his state of mind attributed to confidants".
Mr Butler, while acknowledging that UNSCOM had received assistance from the US as well as 40 other countries, insisted that "in every case we only used that assistance in pursuit of our disarmament mandate". It was never used for any UN member's "national purpose".
Mr Butler said that from 1995, when UNSCOM discovered it was being "flagrantly deceived" by Iraq, it was forced to seek assistance from member-states "to crack this wall of resistance". But he had always insisted that any assistance given to UNSCOM by the US or other countries be used "for our purposes and not for theirs".
The State Department spokesman, Mr James Rubin, reaffirmed US support for Mr Butler, a former Australian ambassador, and denied the US used UNSCOM for spying.
But CNN reported that the US was able to benefit from UNSCOM intelligence gathering on how Iraq was concealing its weapons of mass destruction.
This was because the US helped UNSCOM to eavesdrop on the elite Republican Guard units which were involved in weapons concealment and in protecting President Saddam Hussein.
The US was thus able to receive information which may have helped it to target sensitive Iraqi installations in the recent bombing raids as a "by-product" of UNSCOM's operations.
The Boston Globe reported that British and Israeli as well as US intelligence analysts interpreted the data picked up by the UNSCOM inspectors, using equipment supplied by the US. A former UNSCOM inspector, Mr Scott Ritter, who resigned last year, told the Globe that from March 1998 the US "pressured British and Israeli intelligence to stop supporting the UN eavesdropping operation and took it over itself".
"The US decided this system is too sensitive to be run by UNSCOM. They bullied their way in and took it over," he said.
The US was able to collect some military information on Iraq as part of its contribution to UNSCOM, a senior US official said yesterday. But the official, who asked not to be named, insisted there was "no artificial barrier" between the two information-gathering operations.
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