Bolivia accuses some European countries of ‘act of aggression’

PanARMENIAN.Net - Bolivia has accused some European countries of an "act of aggression" for refusing to allow its presidential jet into their airspace amid suggestions that U.S. fugitive Edward Snowden was on board. Bolivia said France, Italy, Spain and Portugal had blocked the plane from flying over their territory, TweakTown reports.

President Evo Morales was flying back to Bolivia from Moscow when the plane was forced to stop in Vienna. The jet was reportedly searched for Snowden, wanted for leaking U.S. secrets. He was apparently not on board and is still believed to be in Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, from where he is seeking asylum in Bolivia and several other countries.

The incident came hours after Morales said his country would consider a request for political asylum from Snowden. Bolivia's UN envoy Sacha Llorenti told reporters in Geneva that he would complain to the UN about the European countries' actions. "The decisions of these countries violated international law. We are already making procedures to denounce this to the UN secretary general," he said.

But France denied refusing the plane permission, and Spain subsequently said its airspace was open to the jet. The Portuguese foreign ministry said Portugal had granted permission for the plane to pass through its airspace but denied the plane's request to make a refuelling stop in Lisbon because of unspecified technical reasons.

An unnamed Vienna official told the Associated Press news agency that Morales' plane had requested permission to land because there was "no clear indication" the plane had enough fuel to continue its flight. But Llorenti continued to insist that permission to fly through the countries' airspace had been denied at the bidding of the US. "We have no doubt that it was an order from the White House... For no reason whatsoever should a diplomatic plane with a president [inside] be diverted from its route and forced to land in another country." Austrian officials said the airport authorities had searched the plane, but with Morales' permission. The plane took off from Vienna on Wednesday, July 3 morning, having landed there late on Tuesday.

Morales said presidents should have the right to travel anywhere in the world. "It's not an offence against the president, it is an offence against the country, against the whole of the Latin American region," he said before taking off. He described the incident as "almost a kidnapping of 13 hours". However, Eurocontrol--which coordinates Europe's airspace and traffic control--said it was "a national decision whether or not to accept a state flight" under the terms of the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation.

Snowden is wanted by the US on charges of leaking secrets he gathered while working as a contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA), America's electronic spying agency. The leaking of thousands of classified intelligence documents prompted revelations that the U.S. has been systematically seizing vast amounts of phone and web data. National Intelligence Director James Clapper apologized on Tuesday for telling Congress in March that the NSA did not have a policy of gathering data on millions of Americans. He said in a letter to the Senate intelligence committee that his answer had been "clearly erroneous". China, Russia and several European countries have expressed anger with the US over the apparent scale of its surveillance program.