DAVID Cameron yesterday revealed KGB agents once tried to recruit him but insisted he didn’t get the job.
The Prime Minister’s denial raised eyebrows among opponents and even Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev joked he would have made a good Soviet double agent.
And Mr Cameron showed he has a soft spot for the country after he was caught grovelling to Vladimir Putin during yesterday’s tense first visit to Moscow by a British leader since 2005. As the Prime Ministers met he was picked up by a microphone saying: “Thank you again for finding the time for this meeting today.”
Mr Putin has been in a four-year sulk with Britain following the fallout over the killing of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London after he was given asylum.
Mr Cameron made his startling spy claim at Moscow State University. He said he was approached by Soviet spies during his gap year at the height of the Cold War. He said: “I first came to Russia as a student on my gap year between school and university in 1985.
“I took the Trans-Siberian Railway from Nakhodka to Moscow and went on to the Black Sea coast. There, two Russians – speaking perfect English – turned up on a beach mostly used by foreigners. They took me out to lunch and dinner and asked me about life in England and what I thought about politics.
“I told my tutor at university and he asked whether it was an interview. If it was, it seems I didn’t get the job!”
Mr Cameron is not the first British politician linked to the feared Soviet secret service. Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson is said to have had a “permanent file” created by MI5 after entering the Commons in 1945.
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