Putin tells Snowden to stop leaking, refuses US demands

Edward Snowden, a former contractor for the National Security Agency Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that his country had never extradited anyone before and added that US fugitive Edward Snowden could remain in Moscow if he stopped issuing his leaks.
"Russia never hands over anybody anywhere and has no intention to do so," Putin said when grilled by reporters about the fate of the US intelligence leaker believed to be holed up in a Moscow airport's transit zone since his arrival from Hong Kong on June 23.
Putin essentially extended an invitation for Snowden to remain in Russia permanently if he stopped leaking US intelligence information.
"If he (Snowden) wants to remain here there is one condition - he should stop his work aimed at inflicting damage on our American partners no matter how strange this may sound coming from me," Putin said.
The Russian leader reiterated that Russian services were not working with the US fugitive.
"He is not our agent and does not cooperate with us," Putin said. "Our secret services never worked with him and are not working with him now."
"He does not feel like he is an agent of the secret services, he considers himself to be a human rights campaigner, a new dissident, something like Sakharov," Putin said, referring to famous Soviet-era rights campaigner Andrei Sakharov.
Meanwhile, French President Francois Hollande told the United States to immediately cease spying on European institutions, after reports of covert US surveillance of EU diplomatic missions.
"We cannot accept this kind of behaviour between partners and allies," Hollande told journalists during a visit to the western city of Lorient. "We ask that this immediately stop."
Hollande said "enough elements have already been gathered for us to ask for explanations" from Washington about the spying allegations.
"There can be no negotiations or transactions in all areas until we have obtained these guarantees, for France but also for all of the European Union, for all partners of the United States," Hollande told journalists.
It was an apparent reference to sensitive trade talks which are set to start between the US and the EU on creating the world's largest free trade zone.
"We know well that there are systems that have to control (information), especially to fight terrorism, but I don't think that it is in our embassies or in the European Union that this threat exists," he said.
French Minister of Foreign Trade Nicole Bricq said the upcoming talks on the new trade zone, due to begin next week, could be jeopardised.
"This is a topic that could affect relations between Europe and the United States," she told AFP.
"We must absolutely re-establish confidence... it will be difficult to conduct these extremely important negotiations," she said.
Hollande said he had asked Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius to get in touch with US Secretary of State John Kerry immediately "to get all the explanations and all the information."
German news weekly Der Spiegel reported that the US National Security Agency (NSA) carried out covert surveillance on EU diplomatic missions, basing its report on confidential documents, some of which it had been able to consult via fugitive US leaker Edward Snowden.
The European Union, Paris and Berlin have angrily demanded answers over the allegations.
Source: AFP