For the first time in more than a century of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI-6), a woman may head it in Great Britain. This is reported by The Times, writes UNN.
Details
According to the media, for the first time in the history of the MI-6 Secret Intelligence Service, a woman will head it, many years after Judi Dench became James Bond's boss in the film.
Interviews for the position took place last week, and all three final candidates were women - two of them were MI-6 officers. The head of MI-6, Sir Richard Moore, is due to resign in the fall after five years of leadership.
The favorite for the position is 63-year-old Barbara Woodward, the current British ambassador to the UN and former ambassador to China. If appointed, she will be the first woman to head Britain's foreign intelligence service, which has been headed by men only since 1909.
However, her appointment is controversial, because critics claim that she is too sympathetic to China and, it is assumed, has no experience in intelligence, while Beijing has launched aggressive espionage operations in Great Britain.
Woodward's supporters say she is the highest-ranking woman in the diplomatic service, and her experience in Beijing gives her a unique perspective.
"Beijing Barbara", as she is called in Whitehall, has clashed with several foreign ministers over her approach to the oppression of the Uyghur people in Xinjiang, which has been widely described as genocide.
She also held this position when the Chinese government imposed sanctions on five deputies and two peers for criticizing the regime's treatment of the Uyghurs. One of those sanctioned said that Woodward "did absolutely nothing to help".
After leaving Beijing, Woodward gave an interview to the English-language Chinese newspaper Global Times, in which she stated that Taiwan's independence was impossible.
The other two candidates for this position cannot be named, because they are intelligence officers and their identities have not been made public.
Insiders reported that Woodward was offered to apply, against the background that there was no prominent internal candidate to replace Moore, who served undercover in MI-6 in Vietnam, Turkey, Pakistan and Malaysia, before becoming the British Ambassador to Turkey, based in Ankara.
The winner will be determined by Sir Keir Starmer based on the recommendation of an expert council, which includes David Lammy, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Jonathan Powell, the national security advisor.