US President Barack Obama speaks at a press conference in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, Monday. US President Barack Obama on Monday said the United States and Russia have had “high-level” discussions about the case of fugitive former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden and reiterated Washington’s hopes for Russian assistance in bringing him back home to face charges on leaking state secrets.
“There have been high-level discussions with the Russians about trying to find a solution to the problem,” Obama said during a visit to Tanzania.
“We are hopeful that the Russian government makes decisions based on the normal procedures regarding international travel and the normal interactions that law enforcement have,” Obama added.
Obama’s comments came amid reports Monday that Snowden had applied for political asylum in Russia and several other countries from a transit zone in a Moscow airport, where he is reportedly hiding out.
They also came as Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested Russia could consider the request under one condition.
“If he wants to go somewhere [another country] and is accepted, he can. If he wants to stay here, there is one condition: He must stop his work aimed at harming our US partners,” Putin said Monday.
Reached by RIA Novosti on Monday, White House National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden declined to comment on Putin’s statement and said she would not comment on a possible worsening in bilateral ties resulting from the “hypothetical” scenario in which Moscow would offer political refuge to Snowden.
Nikolai Patrushev, head of Russia’s Security Council, told the state-owned Rossiya-24 television network Monday that Alexander Bortnikov, head of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), and US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Robert Mueller were ordered by their respective presidents to “remain in constant contact and find ways” to resolve the standoff.
Snowden, a former US National Security Agency (NSA) contractor who has a US warrant out for his arrest on charges of disclosing details of a secret government surveillance program, has reportedly been hiding out in a transit zone at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport together with Sarah Harrison, a lawyer with the whistleblowing website Wikileaks.
A Russian consular official at the airport told RIA Novosti on Monday that a British citizen named Sarah Harrison had submitted a request at the Sheremetyevo consulate that Russia grant Snowden political asylum, though Russian migration officials said there had been no such request.
The United States has revoked Snowden’s passport, but US State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell told a news briefing Monday that Washington would issue him a one-time travel document to allow him to re-enter the United States and face a “free and fair trial” like any American facing “serious charges.”
“He has a country to return home to, which is the United States of America,” Ventrell said.
Obama on Monday also addressed a report by the German magazine Der Spiegel that Snowden leaked documents showing that the NSA had bugged European Union (EU) offices in the United States.
“We’re still evaluating the article because the problem is that these things come out in dribs and drabs,” Obama said in Tanzania. “We don't know necessarily what programs they’re referring to, we don’t know how they’re sourced.”
Obama said once his administration had identified the specific activities addressed in the article, “we’ll communicate to our [European] allies appropriately.”
He defended US intelligence-gathering activities as the type of operations routinely conducted by intelligence services across the globe.
“I guarantee you that in European capitals, there are people who are interested in, if not what I had for breakfast, at least what my talking points might be should I end up meeting with their leaders,” Obama said. “That's how intelligence services operate.”
Traveling in Brunei on Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry declined to comment on the specifics of the reported US bugging of European allies but like Obama said intelligence gathering is a normal activity for governments throughout the world.
Kerry said Catherine Ashton, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, raised the issue with him Monday at that they “agreed to stay in touch” concerning the matter.
“I agreed to find out exactly what the situation is, and I would get back to her,” Kerry said.
Edward Snowden has accused US President Barack Obama of "pressuring the leaders" of countries where the fugitive former US intelligence contractor sought political asylum.
“On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic "wheeling and dealing" over my case,” Snowden said in his first public statement since fleeing Hong Kong eight days ago and posted late Monday on the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.
“Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President [Joe Biden]to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions,” Snowden said.
“This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me,” he added.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday that fugitive former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden could stay in Russia, if he wanted to, but must stop leaking secrets and doing other activities to harm the United States.
“If he wants to go somewhere [another country] and is accepted, he can. If he wants to stay here, there is one condition: He must stop his work aimed at harming our US partners, no matter how strange this may sound coming from me,” Putin said.
He denied that Snowden had ever had any ties or had ever collaborated with Russian intelligence services. He described Snowden as a person who “does not feel like a former intelligence service employee” but rather “a fighter for human rights, for democracy.”
“He considers himself to be a human rights campaigner, a new type of dissident, to a certain extent, something like Sakharov, but, maybe, of a different scope,” Putin said, referring to Soviet-era scientist and human rights activist Andrei Sakharov.
The Russian leader said his country had no plans to extradite Snowden to the United States, adding that “no one has ever extradited anyone to us.”
“At best, we exchange employees of our Foreign Intelligence Service for those who had been detained, arrested and convicted in Russia,” Putin said.
In the meantime, US President Barack Obama said Monday on an official visit to Tanzania that the US had held “high-level discussions with the Russians about trying to find a solution to the problem" of Snowden’s extradition. A White House spokeswoman confirmed the information, saying that law enforcement agencies in Russia and the US were discussing the matter via their own channels.
Russian Security Council head Nikolai Patrushev said earlier Monday that the presidents of Russia and the US had instructed heads of national security services FSB and FBI to “keep a constant contact and search for possible solution.” Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov confirmed later in the day that the two services are discussing the matter, but said that Obama and Putin had never addressed the matter in person.
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