President Morales, left, speaks with former President Lula of Brazil

Naranjo, Costa Rica – President Laura Chinchilla is the latest Latin American leader to extend support to her Bolivian counterpart President Evo Morales on the matter of being forced to land in Austria on suspicions of fugitive Edward Snowden being aboard the presidential aircraft. President Morales and his Bolivian delegation were denied permission to enter French, Italian and Portuguese airspace.

When asked about her opinion on the international incident, President Chinchilla was at an event in Naranjo, province of Alajuela, where she announced the creation of a special fund to combat the spread and damage of the roya (coffee rust) fungus epidemic. She told reporters of the Spanish news agency EFE :

“We stand in solidarity with President Evo Morales and we trust and hope that, without regard to who the president might be, a similar incident that violates international treaties never happens again.”

President Chinchilla added that Costa Rica has always been a strong supporter of the rights of sovereign nations with regard to international travel and protocol. In President Morales’ case, she stated:

“In accordance to the Vienna Convention, this should never have happened.”

President Morales was returning from Moscow, where former United States spy agency contractor Snowden is rumored to be hiding in, when his return flight to Bolivia was abruptly diverted to Vienna, of all places. This historic European capital has been the site of various conventions on international protocols and diplomatic relations. It is important to note that, according to the U.S. State Department, their country is not a party to the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties:

[Although] The United States signed the treaty on April 24, 1970. The U.S. Senate has not given its advice and consent to the treaty. The United States considers many of the provisions of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties to constitute customary international law on the law of treaties.

According to the New York Times, President Evo Morales’ indignation over the incident has been supported by President Rafael Correa of Ecuador and President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina, who told the press that the incident indicated the presence of:

“vestiges of a colonialism that we thought was completely overcome.”

President Morales’ jet aircraft attempted to refuel in Portugal before crossing the Atlantic on the way back from a meeting in Russia. The airplane was denied entry into Portuguese airspace and later French airspace. Not only was President Morales unceremoniously diverted to Vienna, but he found out through diplomatic channels that Italy and Spain had also denied him access to their airspace, thereby complicating his new flight plan and forcing him to spend the night in Austria.

The consensus in international news media outlets is that the U.S. ordered the denial of airspace to key geopolitical and NATO allies because President Morales hinted that Bolivia would consider giving political asylum to Snowden, who just happened to be in Moscow at the time of his statement. An Austrian government spokesman explained that a search of the Bolivian presidential aircraft confirmed that the absurd notion of Snowden’s presence was, in fact, absurd.

According to the New York Times, the U.S. has been silent on the incident:

At the State Department, a spokeswoman, Jennifer Psaki, declined to say whether American authorities had asked other countries to deny airspace to the Bolivian plane. “I would point you to them to describe why they made decisions if they made decisions,” Ms. Psaki told reporters.

The John le Carresque Snowden affair, which involves leaking of damning documents that reveal a vast international monitoring and spying program conducted by the U.S. National Security Agency, has proven highly embarrassing for the Obama Administration on the eve of the 4^th of July and their celebration of independence. If anything, President Morales’ diversion is proving the ambitious and overly excessive desire of the NSA to spread its Orwellian reach around the world.

Source: El Pais – Costa Rica