Bugging devices found in EU leaders' offices

The building where a summit of European leaders will take place has been bugged, it was disclosed yesterday, plunging the already riven EU into a fresh bout of suspicion and recrimination.

An electronic eavesdropping inquiry revealed that rooms used by six countries, including Britain, France and Germany, may have been phone-tapped for as long as eight years after a security breach in the block where national governments meet. The discovery gave a rise to several theories, with the US top of several countries' lists of possible culprits. The French daily Le Figaro said Belgian police had identified the bugs as American, but diplomats disputed the claim, and some insisted the Belgian authorities had not even been involved in the inquiry.

Speculation about other possible sources included Israel, Turkey, one of the nations negotiating to join the EU in 2004, or one of the existing EU countries hoping to glean inside information before specific talks. An EU spokesman said no culprit had been identified and a British official said there was "simply no evidence at the moment to point to any particular country". News of the discovery in the headquarters of the Council of Ministers heightened tensions in an EU which is bitterly divided over Iraq.

After a briefing on the security lapse, Sweden's EU ambassador said only a few intelligence services were capable of installing such sophisticated devices, which are said to have been wired into the telephone switchboard system and may have been in operation since the Justus Lipsius building was inaugurated in 1995. "We are working on the assumption that these had been in place for some time," said one official.

Although the immediate suspicion was that the episode was linked to Iraq, that now appears less likely. The phone intercepts were put in some time ago and the bugging affected France and Germany, which have opposed the US, and the UK and Spain, which have backed Washington. Italy and Austria were the other countries involved.

The devices were uncovered in a routine security sweep on 28 February but the discovery was only made public yesterday after the article in the French press.The news blackout may have been designed to help investigators catch the perpetrators.

Diplomats were torn between being angry and flattered that an intelligence service had devoted such efforts to tracking EU machinations.

George Papandreou, Foreign Minister of Greece, which holds the EU's rotating presidency, condemned the wire-tapping but added: "To all those who feel a need to tap our phones let me say that Europe is a very transparent organisation.

"They are welcome to our documents on our website and the whole world knows about our discussions.''

One EU diplomat said it was highly unlikely that an EU nation would have devoted such efforts to bugging the building. "It's much easier to go and just ask other countries' diplomats what they are up to," he said.