Correa: US asked Ecuador to block Snowden

AROMO (AFP) — The United States has asked Ecuador to reject intelligence leaker Edward Snowden’s asylum request, the South American country’s leader said Saturday amid a report Washington bugged European Union offi

Rafael Correa said he told US Vice President Joe Biden that Quito would consult with Washington before making a decision but that, ultimately, it was up to Ecuador whether to take in the fugitive who made bombshell revelations about covert US surveillance of phone records and Web traffic.

Quito held the United States in high regard and “did not seek out” being in this situation, Correa said he told Biden during Friday’s call between the two men.

“Do not get the idea that we are anti-American, as some ill-spirited media outlets are doing,” he said he told the vice president.

In his weekly address to the nation, Correa said he also told Biden that Ecuador could not process Snowden’s asylum request because he was not physically in the country.

“When he comes to Ecuadoran soil, if in fact he ever does, and we have to process the request, the first people whose opinion we will seek is that of the United States,” Correa said.

Snowden, currently holed up in the transit area of a Moscow airport after fleeing Hong Kong in the wake of his first disclosures to select media, asked for asylum last weekend.

Ecuador has already granted refuge to Julian Assange, founder of the anti- secrecy WikiLeaks website. Wanted for questioning in Sweden, the Australian has been holed up at Quito’s embassy in London for the past year.

The activist fears that if he is handed over to Sweden, he will be passed onto the United States over controversial diplomatic memo leaks and could face the death penalty there.

Correa said Ecuador would follow the same procedure it did then.

“Just as we did in the Assange case with England, we are going to listen to everyone but the decision would be ours as a sovereign nation,” he said.

“But of course, with fondness and respect for the United States, we are going to keep very much in mind what that country has to say.”

AP The Associated Press’ Ian Phillips stands in the corridor of the Novotel Hotel in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on Friday. The hotel has one wing that lies within the airport’s transit zone. According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, former US spy...