(CS) The Luxembourg government is seeking explanations from Germany and the US after the publication of an email which appears to show the Grand Duchy as a target of surveillance activity.

Austrian Green MP Peter Pilz last week published an email online sent by a Deutsche Telekom employee to a contact at German intelligence service BND. In the document, the employee confirms that connections between Luxembourg and Vienna, Prague, Moscow and Ankara were now linked to the network.

The email was sent in 2005, with the BND currently under fire in Germany for allegedly collaborating with the US's National Security Agency between 2004 and 2008 to siphon off data at the Frankfurt DE-CIX internet exchange point and forwarding it to the NSA.

Prime Minister Xavier Bettel and Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn jointly responded to an urgent parliamentary question by LSAP MP Marc Angel on Monday.

They said that the government had learned from the press about the allegations that the NSA had spied on several data connections between Luxembourg and four other cities – Vienna, Prague, Moscow and Ankara.

“The government has no information on any Luxembourg targets in this collection [of data],” a statement read.

Bettel and Asselborn said that they have contacted German and US authorities demanding clarification on the reports.

In particular, Asselborn called on his German counterpart, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, for full cooperation and transparency on this matter. In a meeting between the colleagues, Steinmeier pledged to help clarify the case.

The Luxembourg ambassador to Washington DC meanwhile has been charged with seeking explanations from the Department of State.

German news agency dpa meanwhile reported on Tuesday that security sources had commented that assumptions made by the Austrian MP were false. They explained that the cities mentioned in the email did not necessarily reflect the start and end points of the network, which could, for example, lie in Iran or elsewhere.

The security sources said that the published document did not allow the conclusion that the NSA carried out espionage against the countries mentioned in the email with the help of the BND and Deutsche Telekom.