Merkel wants US to reestablish trust after claims of NSA monitoring her cell phone

German chancellor Angela Merkel said yesterday that trust between Europe and the US must be "reestablished" after claims the US National Security Agency had been monitoring her cell phone.

Merkel's comments came on arrival at a summit of EU leaders in Brussels, Belgium, which risked being overshadowed as anger rises over allegations that the US had been spying on its allies.

She said the EU needed trust and it was the time for the trust to be reestablished.

The issue had come up when she met US president Barack Obama on Wednesday, after the German government said it had information that the US might have monitored her cell phone.

The US ambassador to Germany, John B Emerson, was also summoned to a meeting with German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle yesterday, according to the German foreign ministry.

According to a spokeswoman, Germany would make its position clear at the meeting.

In the same week that Germany alleged US monitoring, French daily newspaper Le Monde reported claims that the US National Security Agency intercepted over 70 million phone calls in France over a 30-day period.

The two-day European Council meeting would focus on issues pertaining to the digital economy and economic and social policy, as also concerns about EU migration, in the backdrop of shipwreck off an Italian island in which hundreds of migrants from Africa died.

Meanwhile, according to commentators, EU leaders meeting for the two-day summit in Brussels would likely call for action rather than just condemnation of the US over news reports of the tapping of mobile phone of German chancellor Angela Merkel and accessing of phone records of 70 million French citizens.

According to German defense minister Thomas de Maiziere, a return to business as usual was simply was not possible.

Meanwhile, France's president Francois Hollande has been pressing for inclusion of the spying issue in the summit's agenda. According to the French EU commissioner Michel Barnier who spoke to the BBC yesterday "enough is enough."

According to Barnier, confidence in the US had been shaken and as commissioner for internal market and services he suggested Europe develop its own digital tools such as a "European data cloud" independent of American oversight.

Meanwhile, a German parliamentary committee that oversaw the country's intelligence service held a meeting yesterday to discuss the matter.

The committee head Thomas Oppermann, said he was informed that German magazine Der Spiegel had documents on the alleged spying on Merkel and that the claim was found to be "plausible."