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| The German government said it has information that the U.S. might have monitored Angela Merkel's cell phone |
European Union leaders are meeting Thursday in Brussels for a summit
that may be overshadowed by anger about allegations that the United
States has been spying on its European allies.
German Chancellor Angela
Merkel discussed the issue with U.S. President Barack Obama on
Wednesday, after the German government said it had information that the
United States might have monitored her cell phone.
The German allegation
comes in the same week that French daily newspaper Le Monde reported
claims that the U.S. National Security Agency intercepted more than 70
million phone calls in France over a 30-day period.
The two-day EU summit in
Brussels, Belgium, is supposed to focus on the digital economy and
economic and social policy issues, as well as concerns about EU
migration, after a recent shipwreck off an Italian island in which
hundreds of migrants from Africa died.
But French Prime Minister
Jean-Marc Ayrault told the French National Assembly on Tuesday that
France would ask for the question of electronic surveillance to be added
to the agenda.
It's not clear whether
this has happened, but the EU leaders are expected to discuss data
protection issues as part of their debate on the digital economy.
'Completely unacceptable'
Even before the latest
allegations, Germany and other nations had expressed concerns about
alleged U.S. spying after former National Security Agency contractor
Edward Snowden leaked classified information about American surveillance
programs.
German news magazine Der
Spiegel reported in June that leaks from Snowden detailed how the
agency bugged EU offices in Washington and New York, and conducted an
"electronic eavesdropping operation" that tapped into an EU building in
Brussels.
Merkel spoke with Obama
by phone in July about allegations that the United States was conducting
surveillance on its European allies.
After Wednesday's call,
White House spokesman Jay Carney said that Obama had told Merkel that
the United States "is not monitoring and will not monitor" her
communications.
Merkel made it clear
that if the information about the U.S. having monitored her phone were
true, it would be "completely unacceptable," spokesman Steffen Seibert
said of the call.
The U.S. ambassador to
Germany, John Emerson, was summoned to a meeting with German Foreign
Minister Guido Westerwelle on Thursday afternoon, the German Foreign
Ministry said. Germany will make its position clear at that meeting, a
spokeswoman said.
A spokesman for David
Cameron declined to answer questions Thursday about whether the British
Prime Minister's phone had been tapped by the United States, following
Germany's suspicion about U.S. monitoring of Merkel's cell phone.
"I am not going to comment on matters of security or intelligence," the spokesman told reporters at a regular briefing.
Ayrault: 'Shocking' claims
Ayrault described the
report of widespread spying by the NSA on French calls as "worrying" and
"shocking," saying that security should not be guaranteed at the price
of a loss of freedom.
However, U.S. director of national intelligence James Clapper suggested that the claims made by Le Monde were false.
The articles "contain
inaccurate and misleading information regarding U.S. foreign
intelligence activities," a written statement from his office said
Tuesday. It added that the United States does gather intelligence of
"the type gathered by all nations."
Nonetheless, the allegations prompted a flurry of diplomatic activity this week between the United States and France.
Obama and French President Francois Hollande spoke about the claims Monday.
"The President and
President Hollande discussed recent disclosures in the press -- some of
which have distorted our activities and some of which raise legitimate
questions for our friends and allies about how these capabilities are
employed," a White House news release said.
"The President made
clear that the United States has begun to review the way that we gather
intelligence, so that we properly balance the legitimate security
concerns of our citizens and allies with the privacy concerns that all
people share."
Hollande's office said
the President expressed his "deep disapproval with regard to these
practices" to Obama and that such alleged activities would be
unacceptable between allies and friends.
The two Presidents
agreed that French and American intelligence services would cooperate on
investigating the report, according to the statement from the French
President's office.
French Foreign Minister
Laurent Fabius and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry also met Tuesday
to discuss the claims. The U.S. ambassador to France, Charles Rivkin,
was summoned to the French Foreign Ministry in Paris on Monday to
discuss the alleged spying.
Claims of U.S. spying, resulting from leaks by Snowden, have also soured U.S. relations with Mexico and Brazil.
Der Spiegel recently published allegations,
citing Snowden as its source, that the U.S. National Security Agency
"systematically" eavesdropped on the Mexican government and hacked the
public e-mail account of former Mexican President Felipe Calderon.
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