PRESS RELEASE

Russia, Turkey, and China Protest
British Spying at 2009 G-20 Summit

June 17, 2013 (EIRNS)—Documents revealed by the "whistleblower" Edward Snowden show the British and the Americans were intercepting top-secret communications of the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, and others, during the G-20 Summit in 2009. The Guardian, which has seen the documents, also revealed that UK intelligence agency GCHQ monitored foreign politicians and intercepted their emails. Some delegates were tricked into using fake internet cafes which had been set up by UK intelligence agencies to read their email traffic.

The revelation has caused angry outbursts in Russia, Turkey and China, for instance. One senior Russian official, RIA Novosti reported, said that the spying revelations could damage Russia-U.S. t ies. "In 2009 the Russian-American reset was announced, and the American secret service was simultaneously listening in on the phone calls of Dmitry Medvedev," said Igor Morozov, a member of the International Affairs Committee of the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian parliament.

"In this situation how can we trust the current announcements of U.S. President Barack Obama, who is talking about a new reset?"

Alexei Pushkov, head of the International Affairs Committee of the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, described the alleged surveillance on Medvedev as a "scandal" and sheer "deception" on his Twitter account on June 17.

From Ankara, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a written statement that if the news reports claiming that the British government eavesdropped on Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek and his delegation during the G-20 finance ministers meeting in London in 2009 prove to be true, it would be a "scandal" that would be obviously unacceptable for Turkey. The claims reported by the UK daily, the Guardian, are "worrying." The aim of the spying was to find out Ankara's attitudes to financial regulation and reform, as well as Turkish willingness [or not] to co-operate with the rest of the G-20 nations, the report said.