NSA Spying Row: Bugging Friends Is Unacceptable, Warn Germans - GuardianUK

[WillyT]

NSA spying row: bugging friends is unacceptable, warn Germans
US attempts to downplay spying allegations as growing European anger threatens to derail transatlantic trade talks
Ian Traynor in Brussels - guardian.co.uk
Monday 1 July 2013 08.15 EDT

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The leaders of Germany and France have rounded angrily on the US for the first time over spying claims, signalling that ambitious EU-US trade talks scheduled to open next week could become an early casualty of the burgeoning transatlantic espionage dispute.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and French president, François Hollande, described the disclosures of massive US spying and snooping in Europe as unacceptable, with the Germans suggesting there had to be mutual trust if the trade talks were to go ahead in Washington on Monday.

Merkel delivered her severest warning yet on the National Security Agency debacle. "We are no longer in the cold war," her spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said. "If it is confirmed that diplomatic representations of the European Union and individual European countries have been spied upon, we will clearly say that bugging friends is unacceptable."

He said Berlin was keen on the trade talks with Washington, but qualified that support. "Mutual trust is necessary in order to come to an agreement."

After the Guardian's disclosure that US agencies were secretly bugging the French embassy in Washington and France's office at the UN in New York, Hollande called for an immediate halt to the alleged spying.

"We cannot accept this kind of behaviour between partners and allies," Hollande said. "We ask that this stop immediately."

The Europeans received their first opportunity to demand answers from the top level of the Obama administration about the massive scale of US spying on its EU allies when Lady Ashton and John Kerry met in Brunei. The EU and US foreign policy chiefs met on the fringes of a meeting of EU, US and south-east Asian governments, giving the British peer a chance to air EU grievances over the disclosures in the Guardian. On Sunday she demanded prompt clarification from the Americans over the veracity of the media reports.

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More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/01/nsa-spying-allegations-germany-us-france