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04.02.2008 15:45:57
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Спецслужбы;
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Триумф венгерского чекизма
Добрый день!
Председателем разведывательного комитета НАТО стал руководитель венгерского Национального бюро безопасности Шандор
Лаборц, выпускник вышки 1989 г. Ни одна из стран-членов альянса не протестовала, хотя ряд дипломатов потом бурчали журналистам, что типа, таким назначением недовольны.
International Herald Tribune
New NATO intelligence chief was trained by KGB
By Judy Dempsey
Sunday, February 3, 2008
BERLIN: The new chief of the Hungarian secret services, who spent six years
at the KGB's academy in Moscow during the 1980s, has become chairman of
NATO's intelligence committee, a development that diplomats said could
compromise the security of the alliance.
Sandor Laborc, 49, was personally chosen by Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany
of Hungary as director of the country's counterintelligence National
Security Office in December, after a bitter dispute between the governing
coalition led by the Socialists - the former Communists - and the main
opposition party, Fidesz.
Laborc, a former Communist who was trained at the KGB's Dzerzhinsky Academy
from 1983 to 1989, according to members of the national security committee
in the Hungarian Parliament, had failed to win support from that committee,
which oversees such appointments.
Despite that, Gyurcsany and Gyorgy Szilvasy, the minister responsible for
the intelligence services, pushed through the appointment.
"A decision by the National Security Committee has no binding effect,"
Gyurcsany's office said in a statement issued in response to several written
questions about Laborc from the International Herald Tribune. "Gyorgy
Szilvasy had the right to make a decision in his own capacity and advise the
prime minister. He justified the recommendation by introducing General
Laborc as someone with unquestioned professional credentials."
Soon after his appointment, Laborc took over the chairmanship of NATO's
special committee dealing with a wide range of intelligence issues, a
rotating post that is held for a year and which fell to Hungary last month,
alliance officials confirmed Friday.
The committee, whose main task is to analyze and share intelligence,
includes all of the secret service chiefs of NATO countries, who meet
several times a year.
Several NATO delegations, including the United States, whose ambassador was
asked several times to comment on Laborc's appointment, declined to do so.
James Appathurai, a NATO spokesman, said, "We do not comment on personnel
appointments or intelligence issues."
Some delegations said they had not been aware of Laborc's biography. His
short curriculum vitae posted on the Hungarian security service's official
Web site makes no mention of his time spent in Moscow. His past came to
light when Szilvasy proposed him for the top intelligence job last autumn.
NATO diplomats who did agree to discuss the appointment insisted on
anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. They said that even if
they had reservations about Laborc, they were in no position to block his
appointment.
"NATO makes decisions on the basis of consensus," said a senior diplomat
from an East European country. "If we had questioned this appointment then
we would have to go further up to the top, in this case the Hungarian prime
minister, to ask him about Laborc's past."
Another diplomat, from a Western country, said, "It would have taken one
phone call by the U.S. ambassador to NATO to stop this appointment. It would
have been a signal to other countries which might think they can still get
away with this."
In its statement, Gyurcsany's office said: "Not a single ambassador
protested. Through diplomatic channels we received information that our
partners are satisfied with the development of interagency cooperation."
In practice, Laborc's appointment means that some NATO countries will be
much more wary about sharing sensitive intelligence.
"Here we have a person who was trained by the KGB. I cannot assume that he
has changed that much in his attitudes," said another NATO diplomat,
predicting that several important NATO countries would hold back on sharing
intelligence. "NATO, it must be said, is a very leaky organization," the
diplomat added.
Indeed, NATO has been plagued with leaks. Hungary, Poland and the Czech
Republic joined the alliance in 1999, and the rest of the former Warsaw Pact
countries in 2004. After that expansion, military attachés from the
Bulgarian delegation did not receive clearance to have access to a certain
level of intelligence material.
"You could bet that anything we shared with Bulgaria inside NATO went
straight to Moscow ," said another senior Western European diplomat. "The
old Communist nomenklatura and secret services is still around in Romania
and Bulgaria. But I must say the case of Hungary is very, very
disappointing."
Earlier, in the spring of 1999 when NATO was selecting bombing targets in
its war to stop Serbian repression of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, Greece, a
member of NATO and the European Union but an ally of Serbia during the
Balkan wars of the 1990s, repeatedly leaked alliance plans to Belgrade, NATO
diplomats said Friday.
In Hungary itself , Laborc's appointment has deepened the mistrust and
polarization between the governing Socialists and the Fidesz opposition
because of the way the prime minister by-passed the Parliament's national
security committee.
Although the committee's decision is not constitutionally binding, such
committees have served as important instruments of democratic accountability
since 1990, when the Communists were removed from power in Hungary.
Moreover, until 2002 when the Socialists won the parliamentary elections,
any Hungarian official who had served for more than a year in Moscow could
not, for security reasons, be appointed to positions higher than a
department head.
"At stake is the fundamental regard for the rule of law," said Janos
Martonyi, a former Hungarian foreign minister and Fidesz supporter. After a
five-hour debate by the national security committee in late November, Laborc
failed to win a majority of the 11 votes. No other candidate was offered by
the government. The opposition declined to put forward a candidate.
Fidesz claims that Gyurcsany, a former Communist youth leader turned
millionaire who has close ties to President Vladimir Putin of Russia, has
been politicizing the secret services for domestic reasons in order to keep
track of the opposition, the media and trade unions.
The opposition also has criticzed Gyurcsany for trying to push through
austerity measures without public consultation or democratic accountability.
It has challenged the security services' use of live ammunition against
mostly peaceful demonstrators during protests in September 2006.
The protests had been set off by a leak of Gyurcsany's speech to party
supporters, soon after the spring 2006 elections, in which he said the party
had lied "day and night" about the miserable state of the economy in order
to win.
Zsolt Nemeth, chairman of the Parliament's foreign affairs committee and a
leading member of Fidesz, said it was "a great shame what is happening to
the idea of democratic accountability."
He said the two biggest concerns over the Laborc appointment were that he
would replace the young professionals who entered the services during the
1990s and bring back people loyal to Gyurcsany.
"Above all, our concern is that the security services will be become
politicized and be used for domestic politics," he added.
Peter Balazs, an economics professor at Central European University in
Budapest and a supporter of the government, dismissed Fidesz's criticisms.
"Much has changed in Hungary since Laborc's time spent in Moscow over 20
years ago," he said. "This is all about internal politics. Just because
someone was in Moscow during the 1980s, I don't think that we should sack
anybody after 20 years."
Besides the opposition, the United States and Britain are concerned about
Gyurcsany's relations with Putin, according to British diplomats in London.
Last year, Gyurcsany publicly supported Russia's plans to build the South
Stream pipeline that will compete with the EU project known as Nabucco,
which is intended to weaken Europe's dependence on Russian gas imports.
British diplomats, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that
Gyurcsany had changed tack under American and British pressure. Then last
December, during a meeting of the Hungarian and Russian cabinets in
Budapest, Gyurcsany came out again in support of the South Stream project.
Notes:
International Herald Tribune Copyright (C) 2008 The International Herald
Tribune | www.iht.com
С уважением, Василий Кашин