British spies were bugging United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan's office before the Iraq war,former British cabinet minister Clare Short told the BBC on Thursday.

"The UK in this time was also getting spies on Kofi Annan's office and getting reports from him about what was going on," Short said in an interview on BBC Radio 4's Today program.

"These things are done and in the case of Kofi's office, it wasbeing done for some time," the former international development secretary of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's cabinet said, adding that she had read some of the transcripts of Annan's conversations.

"In fact, I have had conversations with Kofi in the run up to the war thinking 'oh dear, there will be a transcript of this and people will see what he and I are saying," said Short, who resigned in last May in protest to Blair's policy on Iraq.

Short's comments came one day after the collapse of the trial of Katharine Gun, a former British intelligence employee of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). Prosecutors said there was no evidence against Gun.

The 29-year-old translator had been accused of leaking a secrete-mail from US spies apparently asking British help in bugging members of the UN Security Council when the United States was seeking to win a UN resolution to authorize war against Iraq.