UK spymaster tells EU: Let’s work to counter militants, Russia

LONDON/BERLIN: Britain and the European Union must retain close security ties after Brexit to foil Islamic State militant attacks and counter Russia’s “pernicious” attempts to subvert Western democracies, the head of Britain’s domestic spy agency said on Monday.

As one of Europe’s leading intelligence powers, Britain is seeking a new security pact with the bloc to ensure its continued access to secrets from major EU countries as it seeks to clinch a broader Brexit deal.

In the first public speech outside Britain by a serving head of MI5, Andrew Parker told an event in Berlin hosted by Germany’s BfV domestic intelligence service that Islamic State militants are plotting “devastating and more complex attacks”. Parker said that while Britain was set to leave the EU next year, its three main intelligence agencies - MI5, the MI6 foreign spy service and the GCHQ eavesdropping agency - were united in wanting to continue cooperation with EU member states.

“We must not risk the loss of mutual capability or weakening of collective effort across Europe,” Parker said, adding that he hoped for a comprehensive UK-EU post-Brexit security agreement. “I don’t do politics but it is of course political arrangements, laws and treaties that permit or constrain what we can do together as agencies protecting our countries and Europe. “MI5, established in 1909 to counter German espionage ahead of World War One, is tasked with protecting British national security and so takes the lead, along with the police, in countering militant attacks. Britain suffered four deadly militant attacks last year that killed 36 people, the deadliest spate since the London “7/7” bombings of July 2005.

These included a suicide bombing at a pop concert in Manchester on May 22 in which 22 people were killed. Parker said Britain had thwarted 12 plots since March 2017, bringing the total number of disrupted attacks since 2013 to 25.He praised the Counter-Terrorism Group (CTG), which groups all 28 European Union countries, Switzerland and Norway, for its exchange of intelligence.

Beside the threat from militant Islamists, including Islamic State operating in Syria and Iraq, Parker described Russia as a hostile state which was seeking to undermine the West, though he said he had no argument with the Russian people and that he had once studied Russian.