France summons US ambassador over spying

Vikrant

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Apr 20, 2013
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LUXEMBOURG/PARIS: France summoned the US ambassador on Monday to protest allegations in Le Monde newspaper about large-scale spying on French citizens by the US National Security Agency.

The allegations that the agency was collecting tens of thousands of French telephone records risked turning into a diplomatic row just as US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Paris for the start of a European tour over Syria.

"I have immediately summoned the US ambassador and he will be received this morning at the Quai d'Orsay (the French foreign ministry)," French foreign minister Laurent Fabius told reporters on the sidelines of an EU meeting in Luxembourg.

Earlier, France's interior minister, Manuel Valls, said Le Monde's revelations that 70.3 million pieces of French telephone data were recorded by the NSA between Dec 10, 2012 and Jan 8, 2013 were "shocking."

"If an allied country spies on France or spies on other European countries, that's totally unacceptable," Valls told Europe 1 radio.

US ambassador to France Charles Rivkin declined immediate comment on reports that he had been called in by the French foreign ministry but stressed that US-French ties were close.

"This relationship on a military, intelligence, special forces ... level is the best it's been in a generation," Rivkin told Reuters as Kerry arrived in Paris.

In July, Paris prosecutors opened a preliminary inquiries into the NSA's programme, known as Prism, after Germany's Der Spiegel and Britain's Guardian revealed wide-scale spying by the agency leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

"We were warned in June (about the programme) and we reacted strongly but obviously we need to go further," Fabius said. "We must quickly assure that these practices aren't repeated."

The NSA's targets appeared to be individuals suspected of links to terrorism, as well as those tied to French business or politics, Le Monde wrote.

France summons US ambassador over spying report - Times Of India
 
The United States National Security Agency spied on French presidents Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande, WikiLeaks said in a press statement published on Tuesday, citing top secret intelligence reports and technical documents.

The revelations were first reported in French daily Liberation and on news website Mediapart, which said the NSA spied on the presidents during a period of at least 2006 until May 2012, the month Hollande took over from Sarkozy.

WikiLeaks said the documents derived from directly targeted NSA surveillance of the communications of Hollande (2012-present), Sarkozy (2007-2012) and Chirac (1995-2007), as well as French cabinet ministers and the French ambassador to the U.S.

According to the documents, Sarkozy is said to have considered restarting Israeli-Palestinian peace talks without U.S. involvement and Hollande feared a Greek euro zone exit back in 2012.

These latest revelations regarding spying among allied Western countries come after it emerged that the NSA had spied on Germany and Germany's own BND intelligence agency had cooperated with the NSA to spy on officials and companies elsewhere in Europe.



Read more at: NSA spied on French presidents WikiLeaks News News - India Today
 

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