admin
Bolivia has said President Evo Morales’ plane was forced to land in Austria after France and Portugal refused air permits, apparently because they suspected it was carrying Edward Snowden, the former US spy agency contractor wanted by Washington on espionage charges.
Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca on Tuesday furiously accused France and Portugal of putting Morales’ life at risk and insisted that Snowden was not on Morales’ plane.
Choquehuanca said that Portugal and France had abruptly cancelled the air permits, forcing the unscheduled Vienna stopover as Morales was returning on a Bolivian government aircraft from Russia.
“They say it was due to technical issues, but after getting explanations from some authorities we found that there appeared to be some unfounded suspicions that Mr Snowden was on the plane . . . We don’t know who invented this lie,” he said. “We want to express our displeasure because this has put the president’s life at risk.”
While attending an energy conference in Russia this week, Morales said he would consider granting asylum to Snowden if requested.
Bolivian Defence Minister Ruben Saavedra said the US State Department may have been behind the decisions to not allow Morales’ plane to land in Portugal or fly over French air space. “We have the suspicion that they (the two European governments) were used by a foreign power, in this case the United States, as a way of intimidating the Bolivian state and President Evo Morales,” he said.
Countries in Latin America, Asia and Europe have spurned asylum requests by Snowden, despite a call by Venezuela for the world to protect the former US spy agency contractor.
Snowden, who revealed the secret US electronic surveillance programme, PRISM, has applied for political asylum in more than a dozen countries in his search for safety from prosecution in the United States.
The 30-year-old American is in legal limbo in the transit area of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, unable to fly out because he has no legal travel documents and also has no Russian visa to leave the airport.
On Monday, the whistleblower broke a nine-day silence since arriving in Moscow from Hong Kong, challenging Washington by saying he was free to publish more about its programmes and that he was being illegally persecuted. That ruled out a prolonged stay in Russia, where a spokesman for President Vladimir Putin said Snowden had withdrawn his request for asylum after the Russian leader said he should stop “harming our American partners”. — Al Jazeera
Online Reporter