BEIJING, Oct. 28 (Xinhuanet) -- German media has reported that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone may have been bugged for more than 10 years by the United States. And a German newspaper says President Barack Obama knew his intelligence service was eavesdropping on Merkel as long ago as 2010, when he reportedly told the German leader he did not know.

Germany received information this week that the U.S. National Security Agency had bugged Merkel’s mobile phone. Berlin summoned the U.S. ambassador, a move unprecedented in post-war relations between the close allies.

On Saturday, German Der Spiegel reported Merkel’s mobile telephone had been listed by the NSA since 2002 - and was still on the list weeks before Obama visited Berlin in June.

Citing a source in Merkel’s office, German media have reported that Obama apologized to Merkel when she called him on Wednesday, and told her that he would have stopped the bugging happening had he known about it.

But Bild am Sonntag, a mass-market newspaper, citing a "U.S. intelligence worker involved in the operation", said NSA chief Keith Alexander informed Obama in person about it in 2010, and the president let it continue.

Bild am Sonntag said Obama in fact wanted more material on Merkel, and ordered the NSA to compile a "comprehensive dossier".

According to the report, the NSA first eavesdropped on Merkel’s predecessor Gerhard Schroeder after he refused to back George W. Bush’s war in Iraq. Surveillance was extended to Merkel.

Eighteen NSA staff working in the U.S. embassy, some 800 meters from Merkel’s office, sent their findings straight to the White House, rather than to NSA headquarters.

Both the White House and the German government declined comment.

High-ranking representatives of German security services and the chancellery will travel to Washington next week to seek clarification of widespread U.S. spying allegations.

(Source: cntv.cn)