UK's intelligence translator to appear before court

A sacked British intelligence translator suspected of leaking US plans to spy on UN Security Council delegations in the run-up to the Iraq war was to appear before London's main criminal court on Monday.
Katharine Gun, 29, was to attend the Old Bailey to enter her plea on charges of disclosing intelligence information without authorisation.
Her trial was unlikely to begin in earnest before later in the year, while her lawyer James Welch has said that, if convicted, she could face up to two years in prison.
Gun was sacked by the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Britain's electronic intelligence monitoring centre, in June, two months after The Observer, a British weekly newspaper, exposed a memo from US intelligence asking for GCHQ's help in spying on six UN Security Council member states.
The six - Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria, Guinea and Pakistan - each wielded crucial votes on UN resolutions intended to green-light the US and British invasion of Iraq that took place in March.
The US memo, according to the Observer, was signed by Frank Koza, a senior official the National Security Agency, which wanted GCHQ to bug the six nations' delegations to find out how they would be voting.
In a new report Sunday, The Observer said a joint British and US spying operation scuppered a last-ditch initiative to avert the invasion of Iraq.
Former Mexican ambassador to the UN, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, told the paper that only surveillance of a closed diplomatic meeting of six UN nations days before the war began would have allowed US officials to find out about plans to give weapons inspectors more time in Iraq.
Zinser told the paper: "When they (the US) found out, they said, 'You should know that we don't like the idea and we don't like you to promote it'."
He added: "The meeting was in the evening and they call us in the morning before the meeting of the Security Council and they say, 'We appreciate you trying to find ideas, but this is not a good idea'."
Last week, The Observer reported that Gun, a Mandarin Chinese expert, was thought to have become involved as part of plans to target China, a permanent member of the council, as well.
Gun has been charged under Section 1 of the Official Secrets Act 1989, which makes it an offence to disclose security and intelligence information without correct authorisation.