RHIANNON RESPONDS

The Senator responds in today's OZ as follows:-

TWO articles on the weekend ("Secret past of Greens senator" and "Rhiannon's secret rendezvous with agent-running KGB officers", 28-29/1) that attempt to link me with the KGB are based on inaccurate ASIO records.

Christian Kerr's reliance on the discredited stories of former ASIO spies has resulted in a story of few facts, much supposition and considerable distortion. I have never been a spy and no one ever attempted to recruit me.

The article is about my trip to England when I was 18 and travelling with friends before university.

According to Kerr the then ASIO director-general had informed his counterpart in MI5 about my visit to England and asked them to supply details of my activities. They would have been disappointed as my hospital cleaning, factory work, partying and sightseeing were hardly subversive.

Kerr has been given access to material in my ASIO file that was redacted in the version that has been made public.

Since 1999 I have been a public representative of the Greens party. I have a strong track record of opposition to racism and bigotry and reject any implication that I am anti-Semitic.

Lee Rhiannon, , Surry Hills, NSW

This is precisely the type of response expected from Rhiannon the politician. It totally fails to address her membership of a political party that supported the totalitarian, anti-Semitic Soviet regime of the time and the best she can come up with is that she worked hard and partied in England.

Which suggests to me that she's quite comfortable with having supported a regime that persecuted Jews for decades and openly supported the nations and the terrorist groups that sought to eradicate the Jewish State and its inhabitants.

Some denial!