The man who leaked US National Security Agency secrets is to meet a Russian official from Amnesty International, the group said.
Sergei Nikitin, head of the rights organisation’s Russia office, said the meeting with Edward Snowden would take place today, but he declined to say where.
Mr Snowden is believed to have been stuck in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo international airport since June 23rd as he negotiates for asylum in another country.
Russian news agencies reported that Mr Snowden had called on several human rights organisations to meet with him at the airport. The other organisations could not immediately be reached for comment.
Senior US and Chinese officials have sharply disagreed over China’s handling of fugitive Edward Snowden, the former spy agency contractor accused of divulging US surveillance program secrets who was allowed to leave Hong Kong last month.
In remarks after high-level political and economic talks, the United States said it was disappointed that Chinese authorities did not send Mr Snowden, on the run in Hong Kong, back to face US justice.
“We were disappointed with how the authorities in Beijing and Hong Kong handled the Snowden case, which undermined our effort to build the trust needed to manage difficult issues,” US deputy secretary of state William Burns said.
China’s state councilor Yang Jiechi said Hong Kong’s actions were in accordance with the law. “Its approach is beyond reproach,” he said about the decision to not detain Mr Snowden.
The disagreement soured the two-day US-China strategic and economic dialogue meetings in Washington.
Mr Snowden left Hong Kong for Moscow, where he is believed to be stuck in the transit area of the city’s international airport, amid speculation he might board a flight to travel to Latin America where he has been offered asylum.
The US government has charged Mr Snowden with disclosing details about secret US surveillance programs the Obama administration considers vital for national security.
Lasting consequences
The United States is conducting a diplomatic full-court press to try to block Mr Snowden from finding refuge in Latin America, where three left-leaning governments have offered to take him in.
US vice-president Joe Biden took the unusual step of telephoning president Rafael Correa of Ecuador to urge him not to give asylum to Mr Snowden. Senior US state department officials have also pushed Venezuela, one of the three countries offering to shelter him, with both sides keenly aware that hopes for better ties and an exchange of ambassadors after years of tension could be on the line.
And all across the region, US embassies have communicated Washington’s message that letting Snowden into Latin America, even if he shows up unexpectedly, would have lasting consequences. “There is not a country in the hemisphere whose government does not understand our position at this point,” a senior state department official focusing on the matter said recently, adding that helping Snowden “would put relations in a very bad place for a long time to come.”
“If someone thinks things would go away, it won’t be the case,” the official said.
Limited leverage
Yet Washington is finding that its leverage in Latin America is limited just when it needs it most, a reflection of how a region that was once a broad zone of US power has become increasingly confident in its ability to act independently. “Our influence in the hemisphere is diminishing,” said Bill Richardson, a former US ambassador to the United Nations who visited Venezuela this year as a representative of the Organization of American States. “It’s important that the Obama administration and secretary of state Kerry devote more time to the region and buttress our relationship with some of the moderate countries, like Mexico and Colombia and Brazil and Peru, to resist that anti-US movement.”
At the same time, Richardson said, there should be efforts to build bridges to countries antagonistic to the United States. The countries offering to take in Snowden - Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia - belong to a bloc of governments engaged in a constant war of words with the United States. Venezuela and Bolivia have expelled US ambassadors and other officials, and in a television interview this week Venezuela’s foreign minister openly shrugged off the US pressure campaign.
“The state department and the government of the United States should know that Venezuela learned a long time ago and defeated pressures from any part of the world,” the minister, Elias Jaua, said.
The United States has continued to reach out to Venezuela. Roberta S Jacobson, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, repeated the Obama administration’s position on Snowden this week in a phone call with the charge d’affaires of the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, a government official said.
In some cases, the diplomatic effort seems to have paid off. Ecuador at one point appeared eager to grant Mr Snowden refuge, but it gradually seemed to back off, saying that it could not even consider his request for asylum unless he was in the country or in one of its embassies abroad.
The call from Mr Biden brought an uncharacteristically warm response from Mr Correa, who often rails against what he sees as excessive US influence in the region. In an interview, he praised Mr Biden for being cordial, saying the vice president asked him not to grant asylum and explained that “it could greatly deteriorate relations, but without any kind of threat, just presenting the importance that the Snowden case has for them.”
By contrast, Mr Correa bristled at what he viewed as threats by US senators who vowed to end trade preferences on some Ecuadorean goods if his country sheltered Mr Snowden. One group of preferences expires at the end of the month unless renewed by Congress, but Ecuador has sought separate White House approval for duty-free treatment for roses, broccoli and artichokes. The White House said last week that it was postponing a decision.
Leaks
Mr Snowden’s leaks sometimes appear timed to coincide with where he is at the moment or hopes to go. When he was hiding out in Hong Kong, he leaked documents about US spying in China.
Now it is Latin America’s turn. This week, a Brazilian newspaper, O Globo, has printed articles based on his leaks about how the United States has been collecting data on telephone calls and email traffic in Brazil and other Latin American countries, pushing even close US allies to lodge angry protests with Washington.
The intensity in the region has been fueled in part from the airborne misadventure last week of president Evo Morales of Bolivia, whose plane was turned back from French airspace and forced to make an emergency landing in Vienna after a meeting in Moscow, where Snowden has been holed up in an airport.
Bolivian authorities called the episode a hijacking, saying the reason was unfounded suspicions that Snowden was on board and accused the United States of being behind it. They also accused Spain, Portugal and Italy of refusing to allow Morales’ plane to fly over or land in their countries. Latin American leaders quickly rallied to his side, condemning the treatment as an affront to the entire region.
For all the bluster, however, it is possible that no government in the region is really eager to see Mr Snowden land in their country. None of the countries that has offered him asylum has said it would be willing to go fetch him - a potentially complicated undertaking given what happened to Mr Morales’ aircraft.
Mr Richardson said that he was baffled by the stance of Venezuela’s president, Nicolas Maduro. He met with Mr Maduro in April, just before he was elected, and said he was asked to tell Washington that Venezuela wanted to improve relations, which have been rocky for years.
Mr Maduro then sent his foreign minister to shake hands with US secretary of state John Kerry, and they agreed to start talks that would eventually lead to a new exchange of ambassadors. But it seems clear that any hopes for better relations would be scuttled if Mr Snowden were given safe haven.
“What I think is going on among Bolivia, Venezuela and Nicaragua and possibly others is, who can replace Chavez as the main US antagonist?” said Mr Richardson, referring to Venezuela’s former president, Hugo Chavez, who died in March. “But the risk for them is a diminished relationship and possibly some retaliation with the US They may feel the headlines they get from being anti-US is worth it for them domestically.”
Ultimately, Nicaragua would be loath to anger the United States, its principal trading partner, especially as it is awaits an annual State Department assessment that helps it get international loans and the expansion of a trade preference that allows some of its products to enter the United States duty-free, said Carlos F Chamorro, a Nicaraguan analyst critical of the government. He argued that the asylum offer made by Nicaragua’s president, Daniel Ortega, amounted to grandstanding, hedged by a caveat that the offer stood “if the circumstances permit.”
“It’s consistent with Ortega’s policy to provoke up to a certain point the American administration while at the same time doing everything to maintain better relations,” Mr Chamorro said.
Reciprocation
Still, Washington’s push for extradition has poked at a sore spot for several countries that have sought the extradition of people wanted by their justice systems. Mr Correa has pointed to the case of two brothers, William and Roberto Isaias, who ran a bank at the center of a huge Ecuadorean financial scandal in the 1990s. They were convicted in absentia of financial wrongdoing in an Ecuadorean court. They now live in the United States, but repeated requests for extradition have been unsuccessful.
And Venezuela has demanded the extradition of Luis Posada Carriles, a former CIA operative accused here of masterminding the bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people in the 1970s. He escaped from a Venezuelan prison in the 1980s and went to live in the United States.
“The first thing you need to do to have the moral standing to ask for the extradition of this youth Snowden, whose only act is to reveal the crimes that you committed, is to turn over Luis Posada Carriles, who you are protecting,” Mr Maduro said this month.
Reuters/NYT