European Union lawmakers have begun a series of meetings aimed at confronting U.S. officials about allegations of widespread American spying on their allies.
The 23-member European Parliament delegation met Monday with U.S. lawmakers and officials in several government agencies, including the National Security Council at the White House. The talks are scheduled to extend through Wednesday.
U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein on Monday called for a `”total review” of all U.S. intelligence programs in response to the allegations, which the California Democrat said she was not told about.
But even with diplomatic efforts under way, European officials continue to look for a way to pressure the U.S. to provide details of past surveillance. They also want assurances that the practice will be curbed.
German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger suggested severing U.S. access to an important law enforcement tool used to track terrorist money flows. The SWIFT agreement, signed after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, allows the U.S. access to funds transferred through the private, Belgium-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, which handles the movement of money between banks worldwide.
In recent days, European leaders have denounced reports of National Security Agency spying on allies, including monitoring of the cellphone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. In the latest outcry, Spain denounced the snooping as “inappropriate and unacceptable.”
The Spanish foreign ministry summoned U.S. Ambassador James Costos for a 45-minute meeting in Madrid within hours of reports in two Spanish newspapers that the U.S. tracked more than 60 million Spanish phone calls in a single month.
El Mundo and El Pais reported that the NSA monitored the calls last December 10 through January 8 of this year. The reports said the U.S. collected the numbers of the calls and their duration, but not their content.
