Clark ensured exposure of passport fraud says paper

Prime Minister Helen Clark is refusing to discuss reports that Mossad tried to get the Security Intelligence Service to sweep the Israeli passport fraud case under the table.

But she says the Government decided from the outset they would go to court.

An Israeli newspaper's strategic affairs commentator, Ze'ev Schiff, said on Sunday that Helen Clark had intervened after Mossad approached the SIS seeking its help to clean up the mess.

"The one who stopped this brushing under the carpet was Prime Minister Helen Clark," he wrote in the Haaretz newspaper.

"She refused to let the debris be cleared out of sight and insisted the two suspects be prosecuted on relatively stiff charges."

Mr Schiff said Israel's Foreign Ministry was not told about the "shenanigans" in New Zealand until Mossad approached the SIS.

Helen Clark refused to confirm or deny the claims that the SIS was approached.

"I never comment on intelligence reports. What I have made clear from the outset is that the Government, having solid grounds to believe that these people were acting on behalf of intelligence agencies from Israel, made it clear the normal judicial process should be followed."

Mr Schiff said that unlike Mossad's previous attempts to get forged foreign passports, the New Zealand case was worse because it involved a local Jew, causing unnecessary damage to Israel and to the reputation of New Zealand's Jewish community.

"It will take time and serious damage control to eradicate the legacy of this latest bungled Mossad caper."

Mr Schiff was commenting after reports in the New Zealand media that former Auckland Jewish Council member Tony Resnick had fled to Israel, along with fellow suspect Zev Barkan, a former Israeli diplomat once posted to Austria and Belgium, after Eli Cara and Uriel Kelman were arrested for attempting to obtain a forged passport.

"New Zealand is one of the last countries whose interests Israel would want to harm," said Mr Schiff.

"But ... these considerations don't count with intelligence agents who are devoid of all political and diplomatic sensibilities and act without adequate supervision."

It became "an iron-clad rule", after similar blunders in Britain and Canada, that local Jews should not be implicated in what should be purely Israeli operations, he said.

Helen Clark's opposition intensified media investigations that linked Resnick to the affair.

- NZPA and staff reporter