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| Guido Westerwelle, Germany's Foreign Minister |
Germany's foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, has called the US ambassador to a personal meeting to discuss allegations that US secret services bugged Angela Merkel's mobile phone.
The decision to call in John B Emerson, who has only been the US representative in Berlin since mid-August, is an unusually drastic measure. During previous upheavals in relations, such as over the Syrian crisis, conversations have taken place between diplomats.
Allegations that the US government's spying had reached the highest level were met with outrage and disappointment in Germany on Thursday. The country's defence minister, Thomas de Maiziere, told ARD television that it would be "really bad" if the reports turned out to be true. Washington and Berlin could not return to "business as usual", he said.
Suddeütsche Zeitung conveyed a strong sense of the depth of disillusionment with the US president in Germany when it wrote that "Barack Obama is not a Nobel peace prize winner, he is a troublemaker".
In a comment piece in the German broadsheet, Robert Rossmann wrote that during his last visit to Germany, "the American president had flamboyantly promised more trusting collaboration between the countries. Even Merkel seems to have lost faith in that promise by now. One doesn't dare imagine how Obama's secret services deal with enemy states, when we see how they treat their closest allies." » | Philip Oltermann in Berlin | Thursday, October 24, 2013
