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		</div><p>German Chancellor Angela Merkel has told politicians she stands by her 2013 complaint that &#8220;spying among friends&#8221; is unacceptable as she appeared before a committee examining alleged US surveillance in Germany.</p>
<p>The parliamentary panel is also examining questionable activities by German intelligence &#8211; which Mrs Merkel said she heard about only much later.</p>
<p>The committee is investigating alleged eavesdropping in Germany by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and its relationship with German counterparts.</p>
<p>The inquiry was launched a year after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed details of secret US eavesdropping programmes in 2013.</p>
<p>Mrs Merkel is expected to be the last witness.</p>
<p>Reports later in 2013 that the NSA listened in on German government phones, including Mrs Merkel&#8217;s, prompted a diplomatic spat between Berlin and Washington that soured otherwise good relations with the Obama administration.</p>
<p>Mrs Merkel declared at the time that &#8220;spying among friends&#8221; was unacceptable.<br />
But subsequent reports indicated that Germany&#8217;s own BND intelligence agency may have helped the US spy on European companies and officials.</p>
<p>Mrs Merkel said that she first heard about the BND&#8217;s alleged activities in March 2015, sticking to a line set out by other officials.</p>
<figure id="attachment_100478" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-100478" style="width: 600px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/1481043002-4a854539cb63fcfabc3a019ea2176dd2-1038x576.jpg"><img src="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/1481043002-4a854539cb63fcfabc3a019ea2176dd2-1038x576.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="333" class="size-full wp-image-100478" /></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-100478" class="wp-caption-text">German Chancellor Angela Merkel had earlier stated that Muslims had the right to practice their religion freely.</figcaption></figure>
<p>And she said she stood by her comment from 2013.</p>
<p>&#8220;My standard was that spying among friends is not acceptable, and if it happens we have to intervene,&#8221; she told politicians.</p>
<p>She noted that a law governing the BND has since been revised, and that the agency&#8217;s chief was replaced. The BND is overseen by the chancellery.</p>
<p>Mrs Merkel also defended Germany&#8217;s failure to achieve a mutual &#8220;no-spy&#8221; agreement with the US, something that her government held out the prospect of in summer 2013, shortly before a national election.</p>
<p>In several hours of testimony, she rejected left-leaning politicians&#8217; suggestions that the government promised something it should have known was not on offer.</p>
<p>On the German side, Mrs Merkel said, &#8220;I am convinced that there was very intensive work on it&#8221;, though she did not personally get involved, but those efforts eventually came to nothing.<br />
Mrs Merkel stressed the importance and difficulty of &#8220;finding the right balance between freedom and security&#8221;.</p>
<p>She said that the possible loss of data from her mobile phone, which was owned by her party, was &#8220;absolutely manageable&#8221; if the alleged spying happened.</p>
<p>German federal prosecutors investigated but closed the probe in 2015 because they could not find evidence that would stand up in court.</p>
<p>Over the years, the NSA affair has failed to inflict any significant political damage on the chancellor.<br />
Mrs Merkel said she sees intelligence co-operation continuing under the new US administration, and it is important to her that &#8220;no doubts arise&#8221; about that.</p>
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