"The UN officially expressed ... its concern regarding recent reports that the communications of the Secretary-General and other senior UN officials have been the subject of surveillance and interference by the US government," Stephane Dujarric, a spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, told reporters on Tuesday.
Such actions, Dujarric said, "are inconsistent with the (US) obligations ... enumerated in the UN charter and the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations."
The information was first reported in US media on Monday, based on the dossier of US Department of Defense documents recently leaked on the Discord internet messaging site.
According to the files, the US intercepted at least four communications between Guterres and other UN officials in recent years. The communiques revealed his frustration with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for staging an International Women’s Day event during his visit to Kiev last month to make it appear as if he was honoring one side of the conflict.
They also revealed his anger with Ethiopian President Abiy Ahmed, who denied him a visa to visit the country’s northern Tigray region, then the center of a destructive insurgency led by the country’s former ruling party.
The US has previously been caught snooping on the communications of allied leaders, such as former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and the United Kingdom reportedly bugged the office of then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in 2005.