BRUSSELS - Telephone bugs have been discovered at offices used by France, Germany and Britain in the building where European Union leaders are due to hold a summit this week, an EU spokesman said on Wednesday.

Sweden's EU ambassador said only a few intelligence services were capable of installing such sophisticated devices, which may have been in action undetected ever since the pink granite EU Council building was inaugurated in 1995.

Officials said the wiretapping devices, found in a routine security sweep on February 28, were attached to phone lines to delegation suites used regularly by national leaders, ministers and senior officials attending EU meetings.

The countries targeted were France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Spain and Austria, the officials said.

The French newspaper Le Figaro, which broke the story in a brief item in its diplomatic gossip column, accused the United States of being behind the wiretapping, revealed amid acute transatlantic tension over looming war in Iraq.

But Dominique-Georges Marro, head of the EU Council press service, told reporters: "We do not know who is behind it. I don't know who was on the other end of the line."

After EU ambassadors were briefed on the espionage affair, Swedish envoy Sven-Olaf Petersson told reporters: "They were very sophisticated installations, we are told, which only a few intelligence services are able to install."

He said the devices had been found on February 28, attached to certain phone lines in the central switchboard. It was not clear why ministers and ambassadors were not informed until after the Le Figaro report.

"TRANSPARENT" EU

"There are many indications that they were installed with the building (in) 1994-95. It is naturally very serious that someone has installed illegal listening devices in our building," Petersson said.

The discovery added to the sense of gloom and distrust in Brussels ahead of an EU summit set to be dominated by the Iraq crisis, which has deeply divided the 15-nation bloc.

Britain, Italy and Spain have strongly backed the United States' plans for war on Iraq while France and Germany have led EU and wider international opposition to any military action.

Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, condemned the wire-tapping but tried to laugh it off.

"To all those who feel a need to tap our phones let me say that Europe is a very transparent organization. They are welcome to use our Web site (to get information)... They should not go to such lengths," he told a news conference.

One EU diplomat said several delegations had received a warning two weeks ago to avoid confidential telephone calls in the Council building because of the danger of eavesdropping.

But Papandreou said he only found out about the incident on Wednesday morning, as did EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana whose office is in the Justus Lipsius council building.

Neither Solana's office nor those of EU military personnel were among those targeted, officials said.

The Council's security service is conducting the probe with help from the authorities of host country Belgium and those countries affected by the wiretapping, officials said.

Copyright 2003 Reuters Ltd

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