Chancellor Angela Merkel may have been targeted by US intelligence agencies for years. Serious evidence has led Merkel to complain on Wednesday directly to US President Barack Obama.
These indications suggest that US intelligence agencies have declared Merkel's mobile as the target object. In the telephone conversation with US President Barack Obama Merkel called on Wednesday for a comprehensive investigation of the allegations.
The Chancellor had made it clear "that such practices, if the evidence should prove true, unequivocally disapproved and considered completely unacceptable," said her spokesman Steffen Seibert. "This would be a grave breach of trust and such practices should be stopped immediately."
Trigger of the unusually sharp reaction of the Federal Government is a current SPIEGEL inquiry in the course of a search. After a review by the Federal Intelligence Service and the Federal Office for Information Security, the government apparently considered the suspicion to be sufficiently plausible to confront the US government.
Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed in the conversation with President Obama the expectation "that the US authorities will provide information on the possible total extent of such wiretapping practices against Germany and thus answer questions that the German government has already months ago," said Seibert.
"As a close alliance partner of the United States of America, the Federal Government expects a clear contractual basis for the future of services and their cooperation."
A spokeswoman for the United States National Security Council said on the allegations against the Spiegel: "The President has assured the Chancellor that the United States will not monitor its communications and will not monitor them."
The spokeswoman wanted to expressly not say on SPIEGEL demand, whether that also applies to the past. This point was pointed out on Wednesday evening in Berlin government circles.
According to Seibert, in the afternoon the head of the Federal Chancellery, Ronald Pofalla, met the Chairman of the Parliamentary Control Panel, Thomas Oppermann, and the Deputy Chairman, Michael Grosse-Brömer, for a briefing and informed them about the proposals in the room.
"Breach of trust among friends"
The SPD demands comprehensive information from the USA. "If this accusation is true, that would be a very serious breach of trust," said Parliamentary Group CEO Thomas Oppermann on Wednesday evening. Even in the election campaign Oppermann had accused the Chancellor, the enlightenment about the spying by the US intelligence NSA not enlighten energetic enough. Union interior expert Hans-Peter Uhl told the "Central German newspaper": "The Chancellor must of course be able to communicate tap-proof." He wants the parliamentary oversight body to deal with the case on Friday.
Left-wing boss Katja Kipping has asked Merkel to inform the Bundestag about the indications of monitoring her mobile phone. "That would be the worst assumption of trust among friends," she said on Wednesday evening the news agency dpa. "It has to be a matter for the Bundestag, and all the facts and information must be on the table of Parliament."
The Federal Data Protection Commissioner Peter Schaar reminds the federal government against decisive steps against excessive surveillance. "The report that the Chancellor's mobile phone was intercepted by US intelligence agencies shows how absurd the political attempt was to declare the debate over the monitoring of everyday communication in Germany to be over," said Schaar of the "Mittelbayerische Zeitung" newspaper. "Given the new revelations, it was downright irresponsible not to have pushed the Enlightenment more decisively."
