Will Venezuela follow through on Snowden offer?

[ProSense]

Venezuela Offers Asylum to Snowden

By WILLIAM NEUMAN and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

<...>

The offers from Venezuela and Nicaragua appeared to be linked to outrage in Latin America over the treatment last week of President Evo Morales of Bolivia, whose plane was denied permission to fly over several European countries because of what Bolivian officials said were unfounded suspicions that Mr. Snowden was aboard. Mr. Morales was on his way home from a meeting in Moscow.

Mr. Maduro had previously voiced sympathy for Mr. Snowden. He frequently bashes the United States, depicting it as an imperialist bully in Latin America. But at the same time he has shown a desire to improve relations with the United States, directing his foreign minister to start talks with Washington aimed at smoothing the rocky relationship with the top buyer of his country’s all-important oil exports.

<...>

In Russia, officials have expressed impatience over Mr. Snowden’s continuing sojourn in the transit zone of Sheremetyevo airport. On Thursday, a deputy foreign minister, Sergey A. Ryabkov, told reporters that Mr. Snowden should pick a destination and leave as soon as possible.

Russia was apparently among the original countries to which Mr. Snowden submitted an asylum request, but a spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin, Dmitri S. Peskov, has said since that the request was withdrawn.

On Thursday, Mr. Putin sent a telegram to President Obama noting the Fourth of July holiday and restating his commitment to holding a summit meeting in Moscow in September, ahead of the G20 conference, which will be in St. Petersburg. American officials have signaled that Mr. Obama is unlikely to visit Moscow if Mr. Snowden is still holed up at Sheremetyevo airport.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/06/world/snowden.html

Maduro did not say how Snowden, marooned in the vast transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport since landing there from Hong Kong on June 23, would get to Caracas. But Venezuela has close diplomatic ties with Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, and his government has long shown it will go to often extraordinary lengths to counter U.S. influence.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/snowden-makes-six-new-asylum-applications-wikileaks-says/2013/07/05/9e6417f4-e5b3-11e2-80eb-3145e2994a55_story.html

[MADem]

1. It'll be interesting to see what happens. I'm sure State is "having a word" as it were.

Maduro had better hope his neighbor - buddies have his back, and are willing to help him financially, because it would not surprise me, if the VZ economy gets much worse ...and it might, very well.... if his good friend Diosdado Cabello (who was closer to Chavez than Maduro EVER was) decides to "pull an Egypt" and put the country back on the "right course."

Diosdado, unlike Maduro and like Chavez, has the loyalty of the Army. Anything could happen.

[ProSense]

2. We'll see in a few days if this

is rhetoric or if there is an actual offer/plan.

[railsback]

3. Good point

We always forget about Cabello, but he is there. Some even say HE is the actual leader of Venezuela, making Maduro nothing more than an Ahmadinejad figurehead.

[ProSense]

4. Kick! n/t

[CakeGrrl]

5. More evidence that geopolitics is a complex issue

Attempts to just stick it to the big bad U.S. aren't as easily realized as the fantasy.

Time will tell.

And while all this is going on, there's the work of the DOJ.