Obama refuses to ‘wheel and deal’ over Snowden with China and Russia
LISTENING IN: Ukrainian activists rally in support of
former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. Picture:
REUTERS
Mr Obama, who appeared concerned that the case would overshadow his three-country tour of Africa that began in Senegal on Thursday, also dismissed suggestions that the US might try to intercept Mr Snowden if he were allowed to leave Moscow by air.
"No, I’m not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker," he told a news conference in Dakar, a note of disdain in his voice. Mr Snowden turned 30 last week.
Mr Obama said regular legal channels should suffice to handle the US request that Mr Snowden, who left Hong Kong for Moscow, be returned to the US.
He said he had not yet spoken to China’s President Xi Jinping or Russian President Vladimir Putin about the issue.
"I have not called President Xi personally or President Putin personally and the reason is ... number one, I shouldn’t have to," Mr Obama said sharply.
"Number two, we’ve got a whole lot of business that we do with China and Russia, and I’m not going to have one case of a suspect who we’re trying to extradite suddenly being elevated to the point where I’ve got to start doing wheeling and dealing and trading on a whole host of other issues."
Mr Snowden fled the US to Hong Kong in May, a few weeks before publication in the Guardian and the Washington Post of details he provided about secret US government surveillance of internet and phone traffic.
The American, who faces espionage charges in the US and has requested political asylum in Ecuador, has not been seen since his arrival in Moscow on Sunday. Russian officials said he was in a transit area at Sheremetyevo airport.
A Russian immigration source close to the matter said Mr Snowden had not sought a Russian visa and there was no order from the Russian foreign ministry or Mr Putin to grant him one.
Charges of US hypocrisy
Mr Snowden’s case has raised tension between the US and both China and Russia. On Thursday, Beijing accused Washington of hypocrisy over cyber security.
Mr Obama’s remarks in Senegal seemed calibrated to exert pressure without leading to lasting damage in ties with either country.
"The more the administration can play it down, the more latitude they’ll have in the diplomatic arena to work out a deal for him (Snowden)," said Andy Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Centre.
Mr Obama indicated that damage to US interests was largely limited to revelations from Mr Snowden’s initial leak.
"I continue to be concerned about the other documents that he may have," Mr Obama said. "That’s part of the reason why we’d like to have Mr. Snowden in custody."
Still, Mr Snowden’s disclosures of widespread eavesdropping by the US National Security Agency (NSA) in China and Hong Kong have given Beijing considerable ammunition in an area that has been a major irritant between the countries.
China’s defence ministry called the US government surveillance programme, known as Prism, "hypocritical behaviour".
"This ‘double standard’ approach is not conducive to peace and security in cyber space," the state news agency Xinhua reported, quoting ministry spokesman Yang Yujun.
In Washington, the top US military officer dismissed comparisons of Chinese and US snooping in cyber space.
"All nations on the face of the planet always conduct intelligence operations in all domains," Army Gen Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told an audience at the Brookings Institution.
"China’s particular niche in cyber has been theft and intellectual property," Mr Dempsey said. "Their view is that there are no rules of the road in cyber, there’s nothing, there’s no laws they are breaking, there’s no standards of behaviour."
In Ecuador, the leftist government of President Rafael Correa said it was waiving preferential rights under a US trade agreement to demonstrate what it saw as its principled stand on Mr Snowden’s asylum request.
Mr Correa told reporters Mr Snowden’s situation was "complicated" because he had not been able to reach Ecuadorean territory to begin processing the asylum request.
"In order to do so, he must have permission of another country, which has not yet happened," Mr Correa said.
In a deliberately provocative touch, Mr Correa’s government also offered a multimillion-dollar donation for human rights training in the US.
The US State Department warned of "grave difficulties" for US-Ecuador relations if the Andean country were to grant Mr Snowden asylum, but gave no specifics.
‘Useful’ conversations
Mr Obama said the US expected all countries that were considering asylum requests for the former contractor to follow international law.
The White House said last week that Hong Kong’s decision to let Mr Snowden leave would hurt US-China relations. Its rhetoric on Russia has been somewhat less harsh.
Mr Putin has rejected US calls to expel Mr Snowden to the US and said the American should choose his destination and leave the Moscow airport as soon as possible.
Mr Obama acknowledged that the US did not have an extradition treaty with Russia, but said such a treaty was not necessary to resolve all of the issues involved.
He characterised conversations between Washington and Moscow as "useful".
Washington is focused on how Mr Snowden, a former systems administrator for the contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, gained access to NSA secrets while working at a facility in Hawaii.
NSA director Gen Keith Alexander on Thursday offered a more detailed breakdown of 54 schemes by militants that he said were disrupted by phone and internet surveillance, even as the Guardian newspaper reported evidence of more extensive spying.
In a speech in Baltimore, Gen Alexander said a list of cases turned over recently to the US Congress included 42 that involved disrupted plots and 12 in which surveillance targets provided material support to terrorism.
The Guardian reported that the NSA for years collected masses of raw data on the email and Internet traffic of US citizens and residents, citing a top-secret draft report on the program prepared by NSA’s inspector general.
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