BERLIN: German political and intelligence envoys are due to hold talks with US officials in Washington Wednesday on rebuilding a “basis of trust” after alleged US tapping of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone.

As spy claims ricocheted across the Atlantic in an espionage row that has frazzled US-European ties, two high-ranking Berlin officials will seek answers and fresh rules on intelligence cooperation, Merkel’s spokesman said.

Confirming Wednesday’s meeting, Steffen Seibert told reporters the talks were aimed at clarifying the allegations and working out “a new basis of trust and new regulation for our cooperation in this area.”

“We are in a process of intensive contacts with US partners both at the intelligence as well as the political level,” he said.

America’s allies in Europe have protested after media reports, based on leaks from fugitive US analyst Edward Snowden, that Washington collected tens of millions of European telephone calls and online communications as part of anti-terror operations.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy decried the snooping, if true, as “inappropriate and unacceptable between partners and friends” after more than 60 million telephone calls in Spain were reportedly spied on by the US National Security Agency (NSA) in a month.

But on Tuesday, US espionage chiefs turned the tables on European allies in the spat over intercepted phone records, saying in many cases it was European agencies — not the NSA — that gathered and shared them with America.

They dismissed as “completely false” allegations that American spy agencies had swept up data on millions of European phone calls.

And they said European newspapers that had made those claims did not understand the data they were using to make the allegations.

The assertion came as a senior official said President Barack Obama was considering banning US spies from tapping the telephones of allied leaders, in the wake of German outrage over the alleged snooping on the newly re-elected chancellor’s communications.

Merkel’s foreign policy adviser Christoph Heusgen and the secret service coordinator Guenter Heiss will take part in Wednesday’s talks, Seibert said.

US officials said National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and counter-terrorism adviser Lisa Monaco would meet the Germans.

A team of European lawmakers has already been in Washington this week to complain over America’s espionage activity against its allies.

Clapper and General Keith Alexander, head of the NSA, testified to Congress that the reports were based on a misreading of information passed by Snowden to European newspapers.

Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, backed up US spymasters’ claims that the European media reports were wrong.