Nato Post For Ex-Spy Trained by KGB

The appointment of Hungary's KGB-trained secret service chief to a senior Nato intelligence committee has alarmed diplomats amid new fears over the security of the alliance's military secrets.

Sandor Laborc, 49, who trained with the Russian secret service's elite at Dzerzhinsky Academy, in Moscow, between 1983 and 1989, is the new chairman of a special Nato committee that analyses and shares intelligence from the 26 member countries.

"The presence of a senior Soviet-trained official will make people think twice and could lead to a policy of withholding highly classified data in certain circumstances," one Nato diplomat said.

General Laborc took the Nato post last month and will hold it under a system of automatic rotation until the end of the year, at a time when relations between the Western alliance and Russia are at their most tense since the end of the Cold War.

His appointment as head of Hungary's National Security Office, in December last year, triggered a bitter domestic row over the continuing dominance of Russia in Eastern Europe and the continuing influence of former Communist nomenclature in countries that are now in Nato and the European Union.