New Delhi, October 2:

The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) today demanded a white paper and a probe by a Supreme Court judge on the recent revelations that the Soviet spy agency KGB had bribed

politicians, media and diplomats in the country.

Pointing out that the revelations in the “The Mitrokhin Archive, Volume II: The KGB and the World,” by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, a senior KGB archivist who was now dead, had “sullied” the reputation of the country, BJP president LK Advani said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should order a public inquiry into it.

“The white paper we demand should not be confined to the KGB. It must cover all foreign sources including CIA (Central Intelligence Agency of the US) and the ISI (Inter Service Intelligence of Pakistan),” Advani told reporters here at the party headquarters. The book revealed details of the agency’s activities in India such as covert funding of the Congress, individuals, media, and politicians of the undivided Communist Party of India. “We felt that the issues raised by these revelations go well beyond individuals or even parties. Some of these charges made are such that the reputation of our entire country gets sullied in the process,” he said.

Advani said the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government had so far chosen “either total reticence or blatant evasion” on the details given in the book. “It will be less than honest and far from convincing to sidetrack these allegations as having been fabricated by an individual or any conspiring power,” he said. Pointing out that then the Soviet Union was a close friend of India, he said it would certainly be “a blot on the fair name of our country to be told by the leading intelligence agency of that country that India those days was a country open for sale or a model of KGB infiltration into the third world.”

The BJP also released a copy of the letter the party leaders — Advani, former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and opposition leader in the Rajya Sabha Jaswant Singh — had sent to the prime minister demanding a complete investigation.

Advani said the party had decided to release the letter to the media as there was no response from Manmohan Singh.