US was snooping on Indian embassy, Khurshid says no big deal

After it emerged that the Indian Embassy in the US was one of the 38 diplomatic missions which American intelligence agencies were spying on, Indian Minister for External Affairs Salman Khurshid said that it didn’t need to be raised a ‘such a high level’.

US National Security Agency documents leaked by the whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the agencies were using a wide range of spying methods including bugging, the Guardian daily in London said quoting the leaked report.

“One document lists 38 embassies and missions, describing them as ’targets’. It details an extraordinary range of spying methods used against each target, from bugs implanted in electronic communications gear to taps into cables to the collection of transmissions with specialised antennae,” the Guardian said.

It added, “along with traditional ideological adversaries and sensitive Middle Eastern countries, the list of targets includes the EU missions and the French, Italian and Greek embassies, as well as a number of other American allies, including Japan, Mexico, South Korea, India and Turkey.

However, Khurshid who is presently attending a summit in Brunei said that there the issue wasn’t something that would stall everything else that was being discussed between the two countries.

“I don’t think we should be raising it to such a high level.. that it becomes a matter of serious question,” Khurshid was reported as saying by CNN-IBN. 

He said that there were issues that they had discussed in passing during US Secretary of State John Kerry’s recent visit to India.

“But it wasn’t something that would stall everything else that we were discussing. It’s an issue, another issue that will be treated on merits,” Khurshid said.

“The list in the September 2010 document does not mention the UK, Germany or other western European states”.

The report said that one of the bugging methods mentioned is codenamed Dropmire, which, according to a 2007 document, is “implanted on the Cryptofax at the EU embassy, DC” – an apparent reference to a bug placed in a commercially available encrypted fax machine used at the mission.

The NSA documents note the machine is used to send cables back to foreign affairs ministries in European capitals.

While the US has said it will not be apologising for its surveillance of the embassies and would discuss it privately with the nations concerned, some nations like France have already reacted strongly to the report.

With inputs from PTI