Snowden gets asylum offer

Venezuela and Nicaragua say they’d take him in, but it’s unclear how or when.

Venezuela’s leader gives the U.S. fugitive perhaps his firmest support yet.

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro offered NSA leaker Edward Snowden political asylum Friday, possibly the firmest offer of refuge the U.S. fugitive has received since exposing a massive program of surveillance of phone calls and emails in the United States and abroad.

Also Friday, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said his government had received an asylum request from Snowden and would be willing to grant it under the right circumstances.

Snowden, who is believed to be stranded in the transit area of a Moscow airport, has applied for refuge to about 30 countries. Many have refused his request.

Maduro made the offer during a military parade in Caracas commemorating the 202nd anniversary of Venezuela’s declaration of independence. He had previously said he would consider such an offer, as had Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa.

Correa, however, appeared to back away from his offer after receiving a phone call from Vice President Joe Biden.

Although Maduro’s statement Friday seemed to go a step further in making a firm offer, the Venezuelan leader was in Moscow this week and did not take the opportunity to bring Snowden back with him. And Maduro made no mention of facilitating Snowden’s trip to Venezuela with either an aircraft or travel documents.

He did not say specifically that Snowden had formally applied for asylum.

Although the offer may hearten Snowden, who has been in limbo since f leeing Hong Kong on June 23 amid U.S. efforts to extradite him, it was still unclear Friday night how Maduro’s offer would work.

The U.S. has revoked Snowden’s passport, so he needs valid travel documents to buy a plane ticket to leave Russia.

In Nicaragua, meanwhile, Ortega said the right to asylum had to be respected.

“It is clear that, if the circumstances permit it, we will happily receive Snowden,” Ortega said in a speech in Managua, “and we will give him asylum here in Nicaragua.”

Ortega, once a leftist revolutionary leader who was a constant thorn in Washington’s side, did not specify what circumstances he meant. Snowden’s request, he said, came through the Nicaraguan Embassy in Moscow.

It was difficult to gauge the sincerity of Ortega’s offer, as he committed to virtually nothing.

He may have been playing to his constituency — the speech was made before hundreds of supporters — by offering a message in solidarity with other regional heads of state.

On Thursday, many of South America’s leftist leaders rallied to support Bolivian President Evo Morales, whose plane was rerouted over Europe on Tuesday amid suspicion that Snowden was on board.

Morales has accused Washington of pressuring European countries to refuse to allow his plane to enter their airspace, forcing it to land in Vienna, according to the Associated Press.

Morales had been returning from a summit in Russia during which he had suggested he would be willing to consider an asylum request from Snowden.