Jeremy Corbyn: I'm not embarrassed about Czech spy links - WATCH
Jeremy Corbyn says he is not embarrassed about links between himself and a Communist spy, insisting: “I did what I believed any other MP would have done.”
The Labour leader launched a scathing attack on sections of the national press last week over claims that he was a Soviet informant.
It followed reports that he met Czechoslovakian agent Jan Sarkocy during the height of the Cold War.
Mr Corbyn insists he had one meeting with a Czech diplomat during the period and has strenuously denied passing on any privileged information.
WATCH Jeremy Corbyn interviewed in Stourbridge:
In an interview with the Express & Star during a visit to the Black Country on Saturday, he also called on Britain to ‘build a relationship’ with modern day Russia in order to challenge Vladimir Putin on issues of ‘human rights and cyber security’.
Questioned over the spy claims, Mr Corbyn told the E&S: “The links are nonsense. What was printed in the papers was nonsense.”
Asked if in hindsight it was a mistake to meet the man in the 1980s, he said: “I met with a Czech diplomat at the time Gorbachev was the president of the Soviet Union to talk about détente, disarmament and peace.
“I did what I believed any other MP would have done and the fact is that the newspapers decided to create a story out of this fantasist and call it fact.
“It’s not an embarrassment to me. It should be a big embarrassment to those papers that printed it.”
Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson claimed Mr Corbyn’s meetings with the alleged spy were ‘a betrayal of this country’, while former M16 head Sir Richard Dearlove said it was ‘absurd’ for the Labour leader to suggest he thought Sarkocy was just a diplomat.
A spokesperson for Mr Corbyn has said: “Jeremy neither had nor offered any privileged information to this or any other diplomat.
"The Cold War Czechoslovak spy Jan Sarkocy is a fantasist, whose claims are entirely false and becoming more absurd by the day.
"This man, who claims to have organised Live Aid and seems to believe Jeremy was in a position to pass on information about Margaret Thatcher’s dietary and clothing habits, has no credibility whatsoever.
“Svetlana Ptacnikova, Director of the Czech Security Forces Archive, has said the records show Jeremy was neither an agent, asset, informer nor collaborator with Czechoslovak intelligence.
“These claims are ridiculous smears, entirely false and should be given no credence whatsoever.”
Mr Corbyn, when asked whether he believed Putin’s Russia was a threat to Britain’s security, said: “I think Russia needs to address its human rights record.
"I think Russia needs to address its human rights issues and we should be pressurising Russia on those issues and building a relationship with Russia in order to challenge them on those issues of human rights and of cyber security.”
The spy allegations prompted the Labour leader to issue a warning to the national press.
In a YouTube video he said newspapers had ‘gone a bit James Bond’ with these ‘smears’, before warning the ‘media barons’ that ‘change is coming’.
The allegations about Mr Corbyn first emerged after Mr Sarkocy claimed the Labour leader was on his payroll during the Cold War, sparking calls for the release of his ‘secret Stasi file’.
The ex-agent, whose spy name was Jan Dymic, said Mr Corbyn was named Agent Cob and met him in the House of Commons.
Mr Sarkocy, who was expelled from the UK and lives in Bratislava, said information Mr Corbyn supplied was ‘rated in Moscow as the number one’.
However, Czech authorities have said there is no evidence that Mr Corbyn was ever a paid informant, while the German authorities responsible for the Stasi archive said they had no documents on him.
Conservative MP Ben Bradley has apologised to Mr Corbyn for what he called a ‘seriously defamatory’ claim made in a tweet that the Labour leader sold British secrets to communist spies.
