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Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has warned the US that there will be a “growing reaction” from countries targeted by the spying scandal.
Rousseff has strongly condemned the recent reports of the US National Security Agency (NSA) spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel, saying it was “a grave violation of sovereignty.”
The Merkel administration is slated to send its intelligence officials to the US to ask for explanations.
Merkel demanded on Thursday that Washington strike a “no-spying” agreement with Berlin and Paris by end of year.
Media reports revealed information based on leaked documents provided by NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden that phone and email communications of both Dilma Rousseff and Angela Merkel were under NSA surveillance.
Brazilian President Rousseff has already urged the UN to form a global body that would draft international rules on privacy and security in cyberspace.
“The time is ripe to create the conditions to prevent cyberspace from being used as a weapon of war, through espionage, sabotage and attacks against systems and infrastructure of other countries,” she said in her opening statement at the UN General Assembly in New York in September.
German daily Bild am Sonntag published a report on Sunday that said US President Barack Obama knew the NSA was spying on Angela Merkel as long ago as 2010 and did nothing to stop it.
“Obama didn’t stop the operation back then but let it continue,” the paper quoted the source as saying.
With inputs from Agencies
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57 founding members, many of them prominent US allies, will sign into creation the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank on Monday, the first major global financial instrument independent from the Bretton Woods system.
Representatives of the countries will meet in Beijing on Monday to sign an agreement of the bank, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. All the five BRICS countries are also joining the new infrastructure investment bank.
The agreement on the $100 billion AIIB will then have to be ratified by the parliaments of the founding members, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said at a daily press briefing in Beijing.
The AIIB is also the first major multilateral development bank in a generation that provides an avenue for China to strengthen its presence in the world’s fastest-growing region.
The US and Japan have not applied for the membership in the AIIB.