‘Snowden yet to reply to Venezuela offer’
Iran Press TV
Fri Jul 12, 2013 2:14AM GMT
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua says US whistleblower Edward Snowden has yet to reply to the Latin American country's offer of asylum and there has been no contact with the former CIA employee.
On July 5, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro offered to grant “humanitarian asylum” to Snowden, who has been holed up at a Moscow airport since June 23 when he travelled from Hong Kong to avoid US extradition.
"As head of state, the government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela decided to offer humanitarian asylum to the young American Edward Snowden so that he can live (without) … persecution from the empire," Maduro said, referring to the United States.
On Thursday, the Venezuelan foreign minister was asked if Caracas had received a response to President Maduro’s asylum offer. "Not yet," Jaua said.
Foreign ministers of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Venezuela were in the Uruguayan capital Montevideo to attend the meeting of the South American trade bloc Mercosur. Presidents of the group will meet on Friday in Montevideo.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Mercosur conference, Jaua stated that Venezuelan government could not contact Snowden.
Russian MP Alexei Pushkov created confusion on July 9 when he tweeted that the American fugitive had accepted the Venezuelan asylum offer, but the MP deleted his post a half an hour later.
Wikileaks, the online whistleblower, said after Pushkov’s tweet that Snowden had "not yet formally accepted asylum in Venezuela."
The US has revoked the 30-year-old’s passport, with State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki saying the fugitive “should not be allowed to proceed in any further international travel, other than is necessary to return him to the US.”
Snowden leaked two top secret US government spying programs under which the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are eavesdropping on millions of American and European phone records and the Internet data from major Internet companies such as Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Apple, and Microsoft.
On June 9, Snowden admitted his role in the leaks in a 12-minute video recorded interview published by The Guardian.
In the interview, he denounced what he described as systematic surveillance of innocent US citizens, saying his "sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them."
The NSA scandal took even broader dimensions when Snowden revealed information about its espionage activities targeting friendly countries.
GJH/HN
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