US in breach of trust by ‘spying’ on my mobile phone says Merkel

Mrs Merkel complained to President Barack Obama in a phone call on Wednesday after receiving information her mobile phone may have been monitored. The White House said the US is not monitoring and won’t monitor her communications – but did not address what might have happened in the past.

In her first public comments since news of the allegations emerged, Mrs Merkel said she told Mr Obama that “spying among friends cannot be”.

“We need trust among allies and partners,” Mrs Merkel said as she arrived at a long-planned summit of the European Union’s 28 leaders in Brussels. “Such trust now has to be built anew. This is what we have to think about.”

She stressed that the US and Europe “face common challenges; we are allies”. But, she added, “such an alliance can only be built on trust”.

German spokesman Steffen Seibert said Mrs Merkel made clear in her call that “she views such practices, if the indications are confirmed... as completely unacceptable” and called for US authorities to clarify the extent of surveillance in Germany.

In Berlin, the Foreign Ministry summoned the US ambassador to complain, while Germany’s defence minister said that Europe could not simply return to business as usual in trans-Atlantic ties following a string of reports that the US was spying on its allies.

Mrs Merkel’s chief of staff, Ronald Pofalla, said officials would make “unmistakably clear” to US Ambassador John B Emerson “that we expect all open questions to be answered”.

The US Embassy said it had no comment.

Defence Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the alleged surveillance would be “really bad” if confirmed.

“The Americans are and remain our best friends, but this is absolutely not right,” he said.

“I have reckoned for years with my cellphone being monitored, but I wasn’t reckoning with the Americans,” said Mr de Maiziere, who was previously Mrs Merkel’s chief of staff and Germany’s interior minister.

“We can’t simply return to business as usual,” he said when asked about possible effects on US-German and US-European relations.

This week, France demanded an explanation of a report the US swept up millions of French phone records, and Paris also summoned the American ambassador.

A German parliamentary committee that oversees the country’s intelligence service held a meeting yesterday to discuss the 
matter, which Mr Pofalla attended. He said the government received information from news magazine Der Spiegel on the matter and then launched “extensive examinations” of the material. Der Spiegel has published material from National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, but didn’t detail its sources on the mobile phone story.

FRESH disclosures from former US intelligence operative Edward Snowdon allege the US National Security Agency monitored the telephone conversations of 35 world leaders after obtaining their numbers from an official in another government department.

The Guardian today reports that a confidential memo shows the NSA encouraged senior officials in the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon to provide access to lists of phone numbers of foreign politicians. One US official alone was said to have passed on numbers of 200 people, none of whom is named, who were immediately “tasked” for monitoring by the NSA.