He was commenting on allegations in the Slovene daily Dnevnik to the effect that in 2004 SOVA taped a number of conversations between Croatian PM Ivo Sanader and incumbent Slovene PM Janez Jansa, at the time the leader of Slovenia's strongest opposition party.
Rop also indirectly explained what he meant yesterday when he told Slovene state television that Jansa and Sanader had been agreeing border incidents in the northern Adriatic so that Jansa's Slovene Democratic Party could use this at the 2004 parliamentary election.
Rop said that SOVA "undoubtedly monitored everything important regarding events and incidents in Piran Bay" and that this was within its jurisdiction.
"SOVA was doing that and as prime minister I was informed about it," he said, without naming the Croatian and Slovene premiers.
Rop went on to say that he could not refute what the Slovene media had written about those events in 2004, adding that he could not reveal details in public, only before a parliamentary commission or other body competent for secret services. He said that publicly revealing such information would not be in Slovenia's state interest or in the interest of its intelligence community.
Dnevnik today revealed new details about the wiretapping, saying that apart from tapes of phone conversations, SOVA had photographs of meetings of "Jansa's and Sanader's couriers" from 2004.