Germany to send senior security officials to Washington for spying talks

High-ranking representatives of the German security services as well as the chancellery will travel to Washington next week to seek clarifications of widespread U.S. spying allegations, including those of mobile phone communications of Chancellor Angela Merkel, a government spokesman said on Friday. The German representatives are due to hold talks with White House officials as well as representatives of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), German government spokesman Georg Streiter told reporters on Friday. According to German media reports, the European Union will also send representatives to the U.S. to discuss the latter's surveillance activities in Europe. Responding to local media reports that the monitoring of Merkel's cellphone might be operated by a special union in the U.S. embassy in Berlin, Streiter said that Berlin had no evidence supporting that allegation. He stressed that "diplomacy is now the right way" to address the controversies, adding that it was necessary to create new confidence in relations with the U.S. German President Joachim Gauck also weighed in on Friday to call for clarifications from U.S. president Barack Obama. "The American President should explain very clearly what happened and how the lost trust can be won back," he said, "If the allegations are true, it would be a serious breach of trust among close friends and political partners." In a commentary titled "Merkel's delicate cellphone diplomacy," the online edition of the German news magazine Der Spiegel tried to describe the delicate situation facing Merkel amid widespread European outrage at the eavesdropping scandal. "The Chancellor must act angrily enough... But she also would not want to appear so furious that would publicly humiliate Germany's most important partner, the United States," it read. The German mass-circulation daily Bild on Friday also quoted unnamed sources as saying that the German Federal Intelligence Service - the BND - also monitored phone calls, fax, SMS and email messages in the United States. "The BND spies in the U.S. apparently more extensive than previously known," the report said. BND head Gerhard Schindler, however, told the newspaper that his agency did not target the U.S. government. Meanwhile, German government spokesman Streiter said that the German foreign intelligence service would act within the law and "would never do something that it does not deserve."