FIRST came a report on September 1st that the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA) had been monitoring the phone calls and e-mails of Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, and other senior officials. Then came evidence that the NSA appeared to be spying on Petrobras, Brazil’s national oil company. An angry Ms Rousseff demanded explanations, an apology and a guarantee that these “illegal practices” would cease, as a condition for going ahead with a long-planned state visit to Washington next month. Although Barack Obama said he understood the concerns raised by Brazil, more explicit contrition was apparently not forthcoming in a 20-minute phone call on September 16th. The two leaders announced the “postponement” of the visit.But with no date rescheduled, that looked more like cancellation. Thus the first international result of a stream of revelations from Edward Snowden, a fugitive NSA contractor, about the agency’s industrial-scale snooping (relayed in this case via a Brazilian television programme), has been a further deterioration in the often-awkward relations between the two largest countries in the Americas.Few in Brazil were surprised by Ms Rousseff’s...
via The Economist: The Americas http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21586559-cancellation-dilma-rousseffs-state-visit-washington-has-short-term-cost?fsrc=rss|ame
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