adminRIO DE JANEIRO – Allegations of US electronic spying in Brazil will be raised when US Secretary of State John Kerry visits the country next week, Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota said on Thursday. “It is an issue that cannot be left out of the bilateral US-Brazil agenda,” he told reporters. Kerry is due in Brasilia on Tuesday after a visit to Bogota, Colombia, on Monday.
In Washington, the US State Department said Kerry would meet high-level government officials in both countries to “discuss issues of bilateral interest.”
Patriota, who spoke during a luncheon with business executives in Rio, stressed however that President Dilma Rousseff still planned to visit the United States in October.
“The trip is still on and we will continue to maintain a specific dialogue with the United States on the spying allegations through appropriate channels,” Patriota said.
“We hope to make progress before the (Rousseff) trip.”
Based on documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, the daily O Globo reported last month that Washington eavesdropped on Brazilians’ telephone conversations and emails.
A US spy base in Brasilia, part of a worldwide network of 16 such stations operated by the NSA, also intercepted foreign satellite transmissions, it claimed.
On Tuesday, Brazil-based US reporter Glenn Greenwald, who writes for Britain’s Guardian, told the Brazilian Senate that he had received up to 20 000 secret US government documents from Snowden.
Snowden, wanted by Washington on felony charges, is currently holed up at an unknown location in Russia after Moscow granted him one-year asylum on August 1. – AFP.
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