India has rejected US whistleblower Edward Snowden’s request for political asylum after carefully examining it and determining it saw no reason to accede to it.
External affairs minister Salman Khurshid, in the Brunei capital for a series of Asean-related meetings, told reporters India was “not an open house for asylums”. India, he said, “has a careful and restrictive policy for asylums”.
In New Delhi, MEA spokesman Syed Akbaru-ddin said the Indian embassy in Moscow got an asylum request from Mr Snowden on Sunday, but turned it down.
Playing down the vast US surveillance programme, Mr Khurshid added: “As far as we are concerned there is no issue today. What happens between other countries and what their concerns are... I don’t want to comment on.”
He said what America was doing “is not actually snooping”. He added: “This is not scrutiny and access to actual messages. It’s only computer analysis of patterns of calls and emails that are being sent. It’s not actually snooping on the content of anybody’s message or conversation.”