LONDON (Reuters) - British papers said Sunday the outing of an 87-year-old great-grandmother as one of the former Soviet Union's top spies was the beginning of a scandal which could unmask dozens of former agents.

A former detective in Britain's Scotland Yard will be named as a Russian spy as revelations by a dissident KGB officer unmask more former Soviet agents, they said.

The Sunday Times said the corrupt former Scotland Yard officer would be named this week as an agent who worked for the KGB over a ten-year period.

The Sunday Telegraph said the detective was codenamed SCOT and was used as a ``Romeo agent'' whose task was to sleep with employees of foreign embassies in order to extract secrets.

The Independent Sunday quoted a British intelligence officer as saying: ``There could be up to 12 more names to come out.''

Great-grandmother Melita Norwood said Sunday she had no regrets about her life as a secret agent and had just wanted to help Moscow in the nuclear race.

Neighbors in the quiet suburb of Bexleyheath in London were stunned to discover that the gardening octogenarian had been passing atomic secrets to Moscow for more than 40 years from 1937.

Christopher Andrew, the Cambridge professor who triggered the furor with his book ``The Mitrokhin Archive'' based on information from dissident KGB officer Vasili Mitrokhin, told the Independent more former spies would be uncovered.

``One of those named will be a prominent public figure who is now dead,'' he said, adding the revelations would not just concern Britons.

``This is global. There are even files on San Marino and Luxembourg,'' he told the paper.

The revelations were made by Mitrokhin, who smuggled out classified files from Russian foreign intelligence archives when he fled his country in 1992.

``The archive smuggled out of the Russian foreign intelligence service details the activities of several key British KGB and Soviet military agents over the decades,''
former British Defense Secretary Tom King told the Times.

``The archive covers the operations of the KGB from 1917 to 1985. I believe it includes information on a host of agents in Britain and around the world,'' he added.

Home Secretary (Interior Minister) Jack Straw has asked for a full report on Norwood's case from the MI5 domestic secret service and has denied reports that he had decided not to prosecute her because of her advanced age, saying that is a decision for law officers.

Most British papers said Sunday Norwood should be prosecuted.

``We need to deter potential traitors. Granting immunity from prosecution to actual traitors is not the way to do it,'' the Sunday Telegraph said in an editorial.