Azernews.Az

A former senior KGB officer has accused Azerbaijan's representative to the United Nations in the 1990s of links to Russian intelligence, a claim the ex-diplomat dismissed as outrageous and false.
The 51-year-old Sergei Tretyakov, who served as deputy head of intelligence at Russia's U.N. mission from 1995 to 2000, defected to the United States with his family in 2000 saying he lost faith in the former Soviet republic. One of the most senior Russian agents to defect, he has now published a book whereby he levelled his spying allegations.
"I don't want to and won't comment on this nonsense," the former Azerbaijani envoy Eldar Guliyev told local Turan news agency.
Guliyev brushed off the statements, saying he had not been in touch with Tretyakov. "I never knew him and don't want to talk about this traitor who flung mud at hundreds of people."
Asked about his presumptions as to why the former secret service agent accused him of spying, Guliyev said he was unaware of this. "If someone is pursuing a PR campaign, this is their private business, but doing so by such filthy methods is unacceptable." Guliyev, who was also asked if he would sue Tretyakov, said he had no such plans as he did not deem it necessary "to react to such stupidity".
The Azerbaijan Foreign Ministry spokesman Khazar Ibrahim, commenting on the matter, reminded that Guliyev had served in Azerbaijani diplomatic missions till 2001 but his current activities had no bearing on diplomatic service.
"Eldar Guliyev headed the Azerbaijani representation at the UN from 1994 and quit the diplomatic system in 2001. He currently acts as executive director of the all-Russia Congress of Azerbaijanis," the spokesman said.
Ibrahim added that the background of all persons serving in diplomatic missions is checked both prior to hiring and before they begin working in embassies.
The row sparked off after an account of Tretyakov's experience was published last week in a book by the American journalist Pete Earley entitled "Comrade J.: The Untold Secrets of Russia's Master Spy in America after the End of the Cold War".
Tretyakov maintained that he had recruited Eldar Guliyev, who allegedly frequently met with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and her deputy Strobe Talbott.
In a sensational revelation, the Russian colonel claimed that Talbott "could be influenced". While making it clear that the US assistant secretary of state was far from being "a Russian spy", he indicated that Talbott considered himself an expert on Russia and could be talked into acting on the Kremlin's behest, Russian media reported.
Tretyakov has told US media that his agents helped the Russian government skim profits to the tune of $500 million from the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq before Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003.
Former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker who led an 18-month investigation into the case reported in October 2005 that U.N. management and the world's most powerful nations were responsible for corruption in the $64 billion program. The report accused more than 2,200 companies from some 40 countries of colluding with Hussein 's regime to bilk the humanitarian program in Iraq of $1.8 billion.
The program was aimed at easing Iraqi suffering under U.N. sanctions imposed after Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. It allowed Iraq to sell oil provided the bulk of the proceeds were used to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian goods and to pay war reparations.
The book also gives insights into how a network of Russian spies operated in New York.
"It's an international spy nest," Tretyakov said of the U.N., during an interview this week with The Associated Press. "Inside the U.N., we were fishing for knowledgeable diplomats who could give us first of all anti-American information.
In his revelations Tretyakov cited some names but stuck mainly to code names. Among the spies he says he recruited for Russia were a Canadian nuclear weapons expert who became a U.N. nuclear verification expert in Vienna, a senior Russian official in the oil-for-food program and a former Soviet bloc ambassador.
Some of the people referenced by a code name in the book have denied Tretyakov's claims. The Russian mission to the U.N. said Friday it had no immediate comment.
Stephane Dujarric, a spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, described Tretyakov's allegations as potentially serious violations of law and U.N. rules.
But Dujarric said it would be up to others to prosecute if the allegations are substantiated: "Since the U.N. can't prosecute, it is now up to national governments to prosecute."
Tretyakov called his defection "a major failure of Russian intelligence in the United States" and warns that Russia, despite the end of the Cold War, harbors bad intentions toward the United States.
Tretyakov also pounded criticism at Russian President Vladimir Putin, calling him "a KGB loser". He termed Putin's anointed successor Dmitry Medvedev as "a puppet," predicting elections in March would not bring any change. "I don't see any light at the end of the tunnel."
Tretyakov said Russian intelligence was just as active now as it ever was in Soviet times. "The Cold War never ended, it's transformed, it's like a virus mutating," he said, adding that he hoped the book would be a "wake-up call" to Americans.
The difference, he said, is the motivation. "When I joined the service we were driven by extreme patriotism."
The decision to defect, he said, was made only after his mother died in 1997, and he had no other close relatives alive in Russia who could be used to blackmail him. The Tretyakovs now live in retirement in an undisclosed location.
Russia's foreign intelligence service SVR said on Monday that revelations by the former spy represented "self-publicity based on treachery".
"We leave on Tretyakov's conscience the so-called revelations made in the book," the agency said in a statement. "In any secret service of the world using treachery for self-publicity has always been considered disgusting, and treachery is viewed as a criminal act."
"In October 2000, Tretyakov, a Russian citizen, decided to stay in the United States after a making a written statement saying: 'My resignation will not harm the interests of the country'," the SVR said but declined to comment on the topic any further.