Germany asks US ambassador for talks on spying reports

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff told the USA ambassador in Berlin during a meeting that German law had to be respected and violations must be punished, Steffen Seibert said in a statement. The target selectors also include Werner Muller, German Federal Minister for Economics 1998-2002; Barbara Hendricks, ex- Secretary of State at the Federal Ministry of Finance and current Federal Minister for the Environment; and Ida-Maria Aschenbrenner, Head of Office of Minister of Finance Theo Waigel from 1989 to 1998.

But the chancellery has said it does not expect the US government to formally agree in the immediate future to a public airing of the list.

US Ambassador to Germany, John Emerson.

Following calls from Green Party lawmaker Konstantin von Notz to launch an investigation, Attorney General Harald Range said he was following the latest revelations “with an eye on a possible criminal offence in the realm of his jurisdiction”.

“It should submit all relevant documents to our committee, which it refrained to do so far”, she said.

The Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, was almost plunged into a major scandal earlier this year, as it became increasingly clear that the agency was complicit in allowing the USA to target businesses and various government officials and institutions in Europe.

Citing documents from Whistleblower website WikiLeaks dating back to between 2010 and 2012, German media reported on July 1 that the NSA did not just tap Merkel’s cell phone calls but also eavesdropped on several German ministers.

Opposition politicians heckled members of the government before taking to the podium themselves to criticise Ms Merkel’s handling of the crisis.

British intelligence spied on German leaders as they discussed how to bailout Greece in 2011, newly released cables purport to show.

“Merkel needs to come out and start fighting right away”, said Christian Flisek of the Social Democrats, partners in Merkel’s “grand coalition” government.

The German-U.S. relationship hit the skids when the fugitive U.S. NSA contract employee, Edward Snowden, leaked an enormous number of classified documents about the U.S.surveillance operations.

In Washington, the Obama administration refused to comment on specific allegation but reiterated that at times the USA government conducts surveillance where national security is a concern.