Germany Eyes Overhauled U.S. Partnership in Talks on Spy Row
Germany's top diplomat said Friday he would urge a revived U.S. partnership based on "trust and mutual respect" in talks with his American counterpart after Berlin's expulsion of a CIA station chief in a spying row.
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he would tackle the diplomatic fallout from the latest twist in a more than year-long rift with the U.S. over surveillance when he meets U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry for weekend talks on Iran.
The shock move to kick out the U.S. embassy intelligence chief Thursday followed the emergence of two alleged United States spying cases within days of each other, re-igniting German fury already on a low boil from last year's NSA scandal.
Analysts said the highly unusual move, which came after the U.S. ambassador was twice called in for talks, marked a watershed in German-U.S. ties, with an openly rattled Berlin now ready to publicly take a stand against its NATO ally.
German newspapers applauded the expulsion as a long overdue act of protest, with the conservative daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) saying Chancellor Angela Merkel was not President Barack Obama's "poodle".
Steinmeier said that Germany's partnership with the U.S. was vital and, with escalating violence in hotspots such as Ukraine and the Middle East, transatlantic cooperation was needed more than ever.
But he cautioned it must be based "not just on trust, but also on mutual respect".
"We want to revive our partnership and friendship on an honest basis. In any case, we're ready for that," he told reporters.
That would be his message, he said, when he and top U.S. diplomat Kerry both attend international talks in Vienna this weekend on the ongoing nuclear talks with Iran.
Steinmeier made no attempt to play down the expulsion, which he termed "the right decision, a necessary step and an appropriate reaction to the breach of trust".
"Drawing consequences was unavoidable," he told reporters.
Washington has refused so far to break its silence on the spat with Europe's biggest economy, which has launched two probes in the last week into suspected U.S. spying.
German police this week searched the Berlin-area home and office of a man who, local media reported, is a German defense ministry employee accused of passing secrets to the United States.
It followed news last Friday that a 31-year-old German BND foreign intelligence service operative had been arrested on suspicion of having sold over 200 documents to the CIA.
The cases have compounded anger at the US' perceived lackluster response to German concern over fugitive intelligence contractor Edward Snowden's revelations last year of widespread National Security Agency (NSA) snooping, including on Merkel's phone.
Germany has sought a "no spying" pact with Washington similar to U.S. agreements with Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, but the U.S. government balked at a deal that could set a precedent for others.
On Thursday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that any "comment on any reported intelligence acts would put at risk U.S. assets, U.S. personnel and United States national security."
Washington was speaking to Berlin through diplomatic, intelligence and law enforcement channels, he said.
News weekly Spiegel Online said "the ball now lies in the U.S.'s court".
Hans Kundnani, research director at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said the U.S. was unlikely to retaliate or react dramatically.
"The expulsion is seen in the U.S. as a symbolic action by Germany," he told AFP.
"Still, it will affect the German-U.S. relationship because it is a quite dramatic step to publicly ask the CIA station chief to leave."
The liberal daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung said ex-chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's "No" to the Iraq war 12 years ago was a "first step" in signaling independence towards the U.S.
"Now comes the next step," the Munich-based daily said. "It was overdue."
Source: Agence France Presse
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