Germany's top diplomat says he will urge a revived US partnership based on "trust and mutual respect" in talks with his American counterpart after Berlin's expulsion of a CIA station chief in a spying row.
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he would tackle the diplomatic fallout from the latest twist in a more than year-long rift with the US over surveillance when he meets US Secretary of State John Kerry for weekend talks on Iran.
The shock move to kick out the US embassy intelligence chief on Thursday followed the emergence of two alleged United States spying cases within days of each other, re-igniting German fury already on a low boil from last year's NSA scandal.
Analysts said the highly unusual move, which came after the US ambassador was twice called in for talks, marked a watershed in German-US ties, with an openly rattled Berlin now ready to publicly take a stand against its NATO ally.
Steinmeier said that Germany's partnership with the US was vital and, with escalating violence in hotspots such as Ukraine and the Middle East, transatlantic cooperation was needed more than ever.
But he cautioned it must be based "not just on trust, but also on mutual respect".
"We want to revive our partnership and friendship on an honest basis. In any case, we're ready for that," he told reporters.
Washington has refused so far to break its silence on the spat with Europe's biggest economy, which has launched two probes in the last week into suspected US spying.
German police this week searched the Berlin-area home and office of a man who, local media reported, is a German defence ministry employee accused of passing secrets to the United States.
It followed news last Friday that a 31-year-old German BND foreign intelligence service operative had been arrested on suspicion of having sold over 200 documents to the CIA.
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