MEXICO CITY (AFP) ― Mexico ordered an investigation Tuesday into allegations that the United States spied on the emails of its president and his predecessor, the latest diplomatic wrangle stemming from America’s intelligence-gathering efforts.
The row, following leaks from the former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, coincided with a report that millions of phone calls in France were being monitored by American government agencies.
While France told the United States to stop snooping on its citizens, U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said the reports from the daily Le Monde contained “inaccurate and misleading” information about U.S. foreign intelligence activities.
The anger in Mexico City and Paris has put Washington in an awkward position, given that the allies collaborate on everything from terror investigations to the war on drugs.
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto ordered an “exhaustive” probe into claims that the U.S. National Security Agency hacked his emails while he was running for office last year.
Mexico will also investigate new allegations that former president Felipe Calderon had been subjected to U.S. eavesdropping while in office.
The Mexican investigation will look into whether such spying indeed took place and if any local officials were complicit, said Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong.
Since Pena Nieto took office in December, Mexico has “revised and strengthened” the security of the president’s voice and computer communications, he added.
The allegations that Calderon was spied on from May 2010 were reported by German weekly Der Spiegel on Sunday after a similar report by U.S. journalist Glenn Greenwald last month that Pena Nieto had been targeted by the NSA.
The Mexican leader has said that U.S. President Barack Obama pledged to launch an investigation into the alleged spying on his emails.
But Foreign Minister Jose Antonio Meade said he would summon the U.S. ambassador over the latest claims and that the American response to the spiraling scandal so far had been “unacceptable.”
Calderon has described the news as an “affront to the institutions of the country.”
In Paris, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius used a breakfast meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to demand a full explanation of the latest revelations on the NSA’s spying program.
“I said again to John Kerry what (French President) Francois Hollande told Barack Obama, that this kind of spying conducted on a large scale by the Americans on its allies is something that is unacceptable,” Fabius said.
All the signs, however, were that France wants to defuse the row.
When asked if her country was considering reprisals over the NSA’s conduct, government spokeswoman Najat Vallaud-Belkacem replied: “I don‘t think there is any need for an escalation.
“We have to have a respectful relationship between partners, between allies. Our confidence in that has been hit but it is after all a very close, individual relationship that we have,” she said.
Le Monde reported this week that the NSA had monitored more than 70 million phone communications in France between Dec. 10, 2012, and Jan. 8 this year.
The daily said the operation appeared to have targeted business and political figures as well as people suspected of being involved in terrorism, putting it in a different league from the monitoring that France’s own intelligence services carry out.
Le Monde followed up on Tuesday by publishing details of U.S. spying on French embassies around the world.
Clapper, the U.S. intelligence chief, said the Le Monde report that the NSA collected 70 million recordings of French citizens was “false” but he added in a statement that he would not discuss details of U.S. activities.
“The United States values our longstanding friendship and alliance with France and we will continue to cooperate on security and intelligence matters going forward,” he said.
Most commentators seemed to agree that it was far from surprising that the United States was conducting intelligence operations in France.
“It doesn‘t mean it is not very serious, and the Americans must explain themselves, but this has all been known about for a very long time,” said Christian Jacob, an opposition MP.
Hollande told Obama on Monday evening that the NSA’s actions had been “unacceptable between friends and allies.”
Obama has already initiated a review of how America gathers intelligence with a view to addressing concerns over citizens’ right to privacy, officials say.
U.S. officials have argued that intelligence acquired from phone monitoring can benefit all of Washington’s allies in fighting terrorism.
koreaherald@heraldcorp.com
