US will continue to spy on foreign govts: Obama

The United States will continue to spy on foreign governments, President Barack Obama has said even as he assured Chancellor Angela Merkel that he would not allow the surveillance mechanism to harm their bilateral relations.

Seen as the first step to win back trust of its allies, Mr. Obama defended the controversial spying programme as necessary to safeguard the security of America and its allies, including Germany.

‘Our intelligence agencies, like German intelligence agencies, and every intelligence agency out there, will continue to be interested in the government intentions of countries around the world. That’s not going to change,’ Obama said.

‘There is no point in having intelligence agencies if you are restricted to the things which you can read in the New York Times or in the Spiegel,’ he said in an interview to the German network ZDF.

Seeking damage control in the wake of global public outrage over the widespread snooping revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, Mr. Obama announced on Friday restrictions on NSA’s intelligence gathering capabilities to put an end to the surveillance of ‘foreign leaders of friendly nations’ but ruled out scrapping the controversial programme altogether.