Swedish secret service seeks informers: chief http://groups.yahoo.com/group/spynews/message/14488 From: C-afp@clari.net (AFP) news:clari.world.europe.northern Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 8:50:15 PST STOCKHOLM, March 7 (AFP) - The Swedish secret service is trying to recruit informants among anti-globalisation activists in a bid to spare EU meetings this spring from the kind of protest violence that marred top-level gatherings in Seattle and Prague, media reported Wednesday. Spy-master Jan Danielsson, head of the SAEPO secret service, said the agency was looking for members of anti-globalisation groups to feed police with inside information on planned protests at several EU meetings to be held in Sweden. "It helps to have a source inside organisations in which SAEPO is interested," he was quoted by newspapers as saying earlier on television. "All secret services work this way. SAEPO has always done it. We are trying to recruit people who we think will give us information." Sweden, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency, is scheduled to host a number of top-level meetings this year. These include two EU summits as well as other meetings of finance ministers, foreign ministers and agriculture ministers. SAEPO has invited militants from the Greens environmental party and the Attac association, which promotes a tax on financial speculation to aid those in need, to provide information on their groups' plans. Political movements such as "No to the EU" -- which groups around 30 eurosceptic organisations -- and the former communist Left Party have said they will stage "critical seminars" on the sidelines of the EU meetings. Anti-globalisation protests have already managed to disrupt gatherings such as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the EU summit in Nice, France, and the December 1999 global finance and trade meetings in Seattle, Washington. Copyright 2001 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)