Moscow expresses indignation on alleged U.S. phone tapping at G20 summit

(Interfax, combined report – June 17, 2013) The Russian Federal Protective Service is taking necessary measures to ensure confidentiality of communication between state leaders, the service told Interfax.

“The Federal Protective Service is taking every necessary measure to provide the appropriate level of confidentiality of information for top-ranking officials of the country,” service spokesman Sergei Devyatov said on Monday. “Protection of confidentiality of negotiations held by national leadership is a direct task of the Federal Protective Service, which it is accomplishing in line with current laws.”

The Guardian said British security services and the U.S. National Security Agency had tried to tap conversations of certain participants in the G20 London summit in 2009.

The newspaper quoted ex-CIA employee Edward Snowden who claimed U.S. spies deployed at a British Royal Air Force base tried to tap satellite telephone conversations of the then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and e-mail correspondence of Russian delegation members.

According to the report, the U.S. special services used their hub Menwith Hill in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, to try to tap phone calls made by Medvedev and members of the Russian delegation via satellite communications.

The newspaper assumes that orders to spy on G20 members came from the then British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

The Guardian believes that this information will have an unfavorable impact on Great Britain which is hosting the G8 summit in Loch Erne this week.

Meanwhile, Alexei Pushkov, the head of the State Duma international affairs committee, sees this report as scandalous.

“It’s a scandal! The U.S. and British special services tapped Medvedev’s phone at the 2009 G20 summit,” Pushkov said in his microblog in Twitter on Monday. “The U.S. denies it, but we can’t trust them. It’s a total lie.”

The embassy of Great Britain has refused to comment on the reports that British special services wiretapped G20 representatives at the London summit in 2009.

“We are not commenting on any issues related to intelligence,” Interfax was told at the British embassy in Moscow on Monday.

Likewise, the Russian Foreign Ministry is too reluctant to comment on The Guardian’s reports.

“I do not comment on reports, especially media reports,” Russian Foreign Ministry official spokesman Alexander Lukashevich told a briefing in Moscow.

The article is based on materials from Intefax.