July 3, 2013
NEW DELHI: The Indian government on Wednesday promised to protest US snooping of its Washington embassy, in a significant backtracking of the remarks of foreign minister Salman Khurshid, who dismissed such concerns in Brunei on Tuesday.
Salman Khurshid earlier virtually defended the US’s vast surveillance programme.
July 3, 2013
NEW DELHI: The Indian government on Wednesday promised to protest US snooping of its Washington embassy, in a significant backtracking of the remarks of foreign minister Salman Khurshid, who dismissed such concerns in Brunei on Tuesday.
Salman Khurshid earlier virtually defended the US’s vast surveillance programme.
Briefing reporters, MEA spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin said, "We have seen and studied the media reports of our embassy in Washington being among the list of diplomatic missions which were intrusively monitored by the US agencies.
"Obviously, we are concerned at such disconcerting reports and we will certainly raise with the US authorities these serious allegations."
His remarks are believed to be a damage control effort after Khurshid virtually defended the US's vast surveillance programme. He declined to refer to it as "snooping", saying, "This is not scrutiny and access to actual messages. It is only computer analysis of patterns of calls and emails that are being sent. It is not actually snooping on specifically on content of anybody's message or conversation."
Khurshid even went along with official US explanation that "some of the information they (the US) got out of their scrutiny, they were able to use it to prevent serious terrorist attacks in several countries".
But MEA made an important distinction between the vast network of metadata that is collected by the US's NSA — as revealed by American whistleblower and CIA contractor Edward Snowden — and the monitoring of the Indian mission in Washington. Akbaruddin, however, clarified that the matter would be raised at the next cyber-security forum. "Since these are technical issues, this will be taken up during cyber security dialogue and that is the right forum."
According to the Snowden leaks, the Indian embassy in Washington is one of the 38 missions that was the target of intrusive US surveillance. But nobody wants to give the US a pass on this one, particularly as European countries, strong allies of the US, have reacted with outrage. On Wednesday, the European Union (EU) suspended for two weeks negotiations with the US on a free-trade agreement. Although most expect both sides to be back at it soon, the European indignation is, indeed, real.
India was seen to have let the US virtually wash over it on the snooping allegations. MEA spokesperson defended Khurshid weakly, by saying he was only "elaborating" on his discussions with US Secretary of State John Kerry. "Our views remain what we have said previously, that we were concerned." In its initial reaction, the MEA had termed it "unacceptable".
But US President Barack Obama remains defiant in the face of global criticism. In Tanzania, Obama took on all his critics, saying, "I guarantee you that in European capitals, there are people who are interested in, if not what I had for breakfast, at least what my talking points might be should I end up meeting with their leaders. That's how intelligence services operate."
He said, "We should stipulate that every intelligence service not just ours, but every European intelligence service, every Asian intelligence service, wherever there's an intelligence service here's one thing that they're going to be doing: They're going to be trying to understand the world better, and what's going on in world capitals around the world", adding, "If that weren't the case, then there'd be no use for an intelligence service."
Courtesy: PTI
