Reply #9: Spies in New Zealand back in July

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New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark has suspended all high-level contacts with Israel after two Israelis suspected of being spies for the Mossad were jailed for trying to obtain a passport illegally.

The government said on Thursday that there were "very strong reasons" to suspect the two men were acting on behalf of Israel's intelligence services and froze all high-level official contact with Israel.

Clark said she would stop a planned visit by Israeli President Moshe Katsav in August. She also said Israeli officials would need visas to enter New Zealand and foreign ministry contacts would be suspended.

In an angry statement issued after an Auckland High Court on Thursday jailed the two men, Clark said that their actions had amounted to a breach of New Zealand's sovereignty."The New Zealand government views the act carried out by the Israeli intelligence agents as not only utterly unacceptable but also a breach of New Zealand sovereignty and international law," she said."Israeli agents caught in an unsuccessful assassination attempt in Jordan in 1997 were found to be carrying fraudulent Canadian passports," she said.

Clark pointed out that it was not the first time Israel had sought fraudulently to obtain passports from another country. The two men were arrested in March after police secretly followed them as they were arranging to pick up the passport.

A third man, identified as Zev William Barkan, was said by the defence to have masterminded the operation, but he left New Zealand before he could be arrested