US Secretary of State John Kerry tells reporters in Brasília that monitoring programs will continue, SIA reports citing Anadolu Agency.
US Secretary of State John Kerry has defended the US surveillance programs which recently threatened to cause a major rift in relations with Brazil and other Latin American nations. Kerry, who is in Brazil to strengthen bilateral ties as part of two-day tour that has already taken in a visit to Colombia, said the programs would continue despite calls from Brazil to end the spy programs.
At a joint press conference in Brasília with Brazilian counterpart, External Affairs Minister Antonio Patriota, Kerry said the intelligence-gathering program at the heart of a spy scandal story exposed by Brazil’s O Globo daily newspaper had given "security to North Americans, Brazilians and others in the world" but that he would work to provide transparency for his Brazilian colleagues and others affronted by the surveillance.
"We believe that our intelligence service protects our nation, as well as others. We will continue to do it," Kerry said, adding that the US had not been "surprised or upset that Brazil would ask questions" and that the regional powerhouse was "owed answers with respect to those questions and they will get them."
"We will work together to make certain that [these issues] do not get in the way of all the other things that we talked about," Kerry said, assuring reporters that the US was talking to their Brazilian partners about the program, although operational issues could not be discussed publicly.
Patriota said that US-Brazil relations were maturing on many fronts, but criticized the program and warned that mutual trust and bilateral relations could be damaged if the US failed to give satisfactory explanations:
"We are facing a new type of challenge in our bilateral relation. We run the risk of casting a shadow of distrust over our work. We need to stop practices that violate sovereignty."
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