Source: News.Com.au

AUSTRALIANS travelling to Dubai will have to obtain a visa, be fingerprinted and have an iris scan in the wake of the Mossad hit squad passport scandal.

The Australian Government requires people from the United Arab Emirates, which includes Dubai, to hold a visa to enter this country, but until now that strict condition was not reciprocated.

According to a well-placed source, the Emirati Government was on the verge of insisting on a visa as well as biometric identity checks for visitors from the countries embroiled in the passport affair including Australia, Germany, France, the UK and Ireland.

The move comes as security sources revealed dozens of Australian passports were held in a passport "library" containing hundreds of genuine and fake foreign travel documents at Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv.

One source said that it was not uncommon for dual Israeli citizens to be approached by Mossad to use their non-Israeli passport for a "vital" national security operation.

"Most Israelis would give it up," the source said.

A former agent with Australia's overseas spy agency, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, Warren Reed, said all intelligence agencies worth their salt, including ours, used fake documents.

"This is commonplace and everyone does it to everyone else," he said.

Mr Reed, who travelled on false documents many times, said the cardinal rule was never to harm a friendly government