Snowden Renews Plea for Moscow to Grant Asylum

Tanya Lokshina/Human Rights Watch, via European Pressphoto Agency

Snowden Makes Appeal From Airport: Video of Edward J. Snowden with international rights activists in Moscow on Friday was posted on the Russian news site Life News.

MOSCOW — In a high-profile spectacle that had the hallmarks of a Kremlin-approved event, Edward J. Snowden, the fugitive American intelligence contractor, broke his silence after three weeks of seclusion on Friday, telling a handpicked group of Russian public figures that he hoped to receive political asylum in Russia.

The guests, several of them closely aligned with President Vladimir V. Putin, were invited through a mysterious e-mail that many had thought was fake and then swept past passport control into the restricted border zone where Mr. Snowden has been confined since his arrival on June 23.

When they emerged, it appeared more likely that Mr. Snowden would be granted his wish and remain in Russia as he waits for conditions that would allow him to travel safely to Latin America, where three countries have offered him asylum.

Russia allowed Mr. Snowden to fly into Moscow, and officials have clearly relished the opportunity to embrace an American dissident after weathering years of Western criticism of their human rights record.

But once Mr. Snowden was ensconced in the airport, the prospect of his long-term presence in Russia apparently seemed less appealing. His first request for asylum two weeks ago was discouraged, and Russia has taken pains to portray itself as neutral. Since then, Mr. Snowden's options have narrowed, and so have the Kremlin's, said Dmitri V. Trenin, the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, a research center in Moscow.

"They cannot keep him here indefinitely, they cannot extradite himself to the U.S., they cannot send him out of the country so that he can be picked up," Mr. Trenin said. "The government at this stage feels they have to do something to end this stalemate, and the only way to end the stalemate is to go to a default position — that has always been that he stays in Russia and observes certain rules."

The Kremlin has laid some groundwork for holding Mr. Snowden on a more permanent basis. Ten days ago, perhaps in an attempt to limit damage to the bilateral relationship, Mr. Putin said Mr. Snowden could stay only if he agreed to "cease his work aimed at inflicting damage on our American partners." A number of conservative, Kremlin-connected figures have praised Mr. Snowden as a defender of human rights and called for granting asylum.

On Friday evening, President Obama talked to Mr. Putin by phone in their first conversation since Mr. Snowden arrived in Moscow. The White House offered no details about the call, other than to issue a statement saying the two had discussed "the status of Mr. Edward Snowden" as well as issues like counterterrorism and the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

Earlier Friday, Mr. Putin's spokesman reiterated the Russian president's previous offer, and human rights figures who participated in the airport event reported that Mr. Snowden said he accepted the conditions. But Mr. Snowden has said on numerous occasions that he did not think his disclosures had hurt American interests, and it remained unclear whether he planned to continue leaking classified documents.

The developments precede by just two months Mr. Obama's scheduled visit to Moscow and St. Petersburg, part of an effort to reinvigorate a relationship that has declined sharply over the last year.

The White House complained that the prospect of Russian asylum would violate Moscow's own stated desire to avoid any further damage to American national security, but it also said that the United States did not want the episode to undercut relations.

"Providing a propaganda platform for Mr. Snowden runs counter to the Russian government's previous declarations of Russia's neutrality and that they have no control over his presence in the airport," said Jay Carney, the White House press secretary. "It's also incompatible with Russian assurances that they do not want Mr. Snowden to further damage U.S. interests."

But Mr. Carney added, "We don't believe this should, and we don't want it to do harm to our important relationship with Russia."

Nevertheless, the administration's rapt attention to the case was evident on Friday morning. A Human Rights Watch representative, Tanya Lokshina, said an embassy staff member had called her as she was en route to the meeting.

Reporting was contributed by Peter Baker from Washington; Rick Gladstone from New York; William Neuman from Caracas, Venezuela; Nick Cumming-Bruce from Geneva; and Noah Sneider from Moscow.

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