Summary French President has demanded of US to immediately stop eavesdropping of European Union.
PARIS (AP) - French President Francois Hollande is demanding that the United States immediately stop its alleged eavesdropping of the European Union.
According to weekend reports, U.S. intelligence agencies have bugged EU offices in three cities. Hollande said on Monday during a trip to western France that "We cannot accept this kind of behavior." He says, "We demand that this cease immediately." He asked for an immediate explanation.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry says he doesn t know the details of the allegations, but maintains that many nations undertake lots of different kinds of activities to protect their national interests. The German government on Monday invited the U.S. ambassador in Berlin for talks, as European countries angry over reports that Washington bugged EU offices piled on to demand answers about the scope of U.S. surveillance.
The Obama administration is facing a breakdown in confidence from key allies over secret surveillance programs that reportedly installed the covert listening devices in EU offices. Germany s move was its most direct expression of anger yet, and signaled that one of Washington s closest allies was unlikely to let the matter drop without at least a strong show of outrage.
"Eavesdropping on friends is unacceptable," German government spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters in Berlin. "We re not in the Cold War anymore." Some Europeans have warned that the bugging revelations could scuttle ongoing negotiations on a trans-Atlantic trade treaty, which seeks to create jobs and boost commerce by billions annually in what would be the world s largest free trade area.
Germany has been among the European countries most anxious to reach a trade deal with the U.S., and it will likely try to strike a careful balance in its criticism of Washington.
Europe s outage was triggered by a Sunday report by German news weekly Der Spiegel that the U.S. National Security Agency bugged diplomats from friendly nations, such as the EU offices in Washington, New York and Brussels. The report was partly based on an ongoing series of revelations of U.S. eavesdropping leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
EU Foreign Affairs chief Catherine Ashton raised the issue with Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday during a meeting on the sidelines of a security conference in Brunei. Kerry had said he didn t know the details of the allegations, but maintained that many nations undertake lots of different kinds of activities to protect their national interests.
