German chancellor wants meeting with U.S. over espionage

BERLIN, July 2 (UPI) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel contacted the U.S. Ambassador in Berlin Thursday to set up a meeting about leaked reports of espionage.

Wikileaks documents that show the National Security Agency (NSA) has been spying on German officials from various departments surfaced Wednesday.

Information about when the meeting will take place has not been released.

According to Wikileaks, the NSA has been tapping the phone lines of high-ranking German public officials involved with commerce, finance, economics and agriculture. Specifically, 69 German government telephone numbers surfaced from an NSA target list that corroborates claims of espionage against Germany by the NSA for nearly 20 years.

Additional information shows that the United States and United Kingdom discussed their opinion on the solution to the Greek financial crisis through the clandestinely obtained information. Furthermore, the United Kingdom allegedly gave the United States advanced knowledge of the German government's position on a European Union bailout plan for Greece. The German government was opposed to giving a banking license to the European Financial Stability Facility.

The documents date from 2010 to 2012. They show that some of the earliest targets on the list include former German Finance Minister Oskar Lafontaine and former Minister for Economics Werner Müller.

The news exacerbates already strained relationships between Germany and the U.S. Their relationship was sullied in 2013, when former NSA contractor Edward Snowden released documents showing that the U.S. was spying on many of its allies.