French President François Hollande and President Barack Obama meet on the sidelines of the G7 meeting in Germany on June 8, 2015

Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has summoned the US ambassador in France over leaked documents that suggest her government spied on President François Hollande and two predecessors, according to diplomatic sources.

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US Ambassador Jane Hartley was asked to attend a meeting on Wednesday afternoon to discuss the documents published by WikiLeaks the previous day.

The documents – labelled "Top Secret" and appearing to reveal spying on Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy and Hollande from 2006 to 2012 – were revealed online by WikiLeaks, in partnership with French newspaper Libération and the Mediapart website.

The White House on Wednesday insisted that Hollande was not the target of intercepted communications by the National Security Agency (NSA), following the revelations that have caused indignation across France.

WikiLeaks said its "Espionnage Élysée" files include secret NSA intelligence reports and technical documents on the communications of high-level French officials over the past 10 years.

The documents derive from NSA surveillance of Hollande as well as former presidents Sarkozy (2007–2012) and Chirac (1995–2007). French cabinet ministers and the French ambassador to the United States were also targeted.

Among the issues addressed in the intercepted communications were "some of the most pressing issues facing France and the international community," WikiLeaks said, including the global financial crisis, the Greek debt crisis and the leadership of the European Union.

Sarkozy is said to have considered restarting Israeli-Palestinian peace talks without US involvement and Hollande is reported to have feared a Greek euro zone exit back in 2012.

French efforts "to determine the make-up of the executive staff of the United Nations and a dispute between the French and US governments over US spying on France" were also discussed.

The latest revelations are likely to ignite a firestorm of controversy in France, as did previous allegations of US spying on French and German leaders. Reports that the NSA had wiretapped German Chancellor Angela Merkel's private phone sparked a political scandal in Germany and prompted an official inquiry into the extent of the German intelligence services' co-operation with the United States.

Michele Alliot-Marie, French former defence and foreign affairs minister under Chirac and Sarkozy, told France’s iTele TV channel that France had long known that the US had the technical means to try to intercept conversations.

“We are not naive, the conversations that took place between the defence ministry and the president did not happen on the telephone,” she said. “That being said, it does raise the problem of the relationship of trust between allies.”

'Greater insight into US spying'

“While the German disclosures focused on the isolated fact that senior officials were targeted by US intelligence, WikiLeaks’ publication today provides much greater insight into US spying on its allies,” WikiLeaks said.

This includes “the actual content of intelligence products deriving from the intercepts, showing how the US spies on the phone calls of French leaders and ministers for political, economic and diplomatic intelligence”.

France and Germany led a 2013 push to outline a spying "code of conduct" in conjunction with the United States following reports of NSA monitoring activities that caused an outcry among European citizens.

Previous diplomatic cables published on the WikiLeaks website dating from the 1970s revealed that US diplomats at the time were closely monitoring two future French presidents, Chirac and his predecessor, François Mitterrand.

Reacting to outrage from France on Wednesday morning, the White House insisted it was no longer targeting Hollande's communications and would not do so in the future.

The latest round of revelations come just weeks after President Barack Obama signed landmark legislation ending the US government's bulk telephone data dragnet, significantly reversing American policy by reining in the most controversial surveillance programme since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

"We are not targeting and will not target the communications of President Hollande," National Security Council spokesman Ned Price told reporters late on Tuesday, calling the US partnership with France "indispensable" but without addressing what might have been done in the past.

WikiLeaks said French readers could “expect more timely and important revelations in the near future".

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS)

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