Obama admin can’t hew a consistent path on anything. Obama says he shouldn’t have to get on the phone to anyone for this, but sends Biden out to do it.
Meanwhile Ecuador is toning back their language a bit as well, seeming more conciliatory to administration outreach.
Via Fox:
Vice President Biden personally intervened in the case of Edward Snowden, calling Ecuador’s president to urge him to reject the NSA leaker’s asylum request.
The move comes after President Obama on Thursday said he had not phoned world leaders on the matter because he “shouldn’t have to” — and because he doesn’t want to start “wheeling and dealing” with other nations to extradite a “hacker.”
But as the stalemate dragged on, Biden on Friday phoned Ecuador’s Rafael Correa. It marked the highest-level conversation between the U.S. and Ecuador that has been publicly disclosed since Snowden began seeking asylum from that country.
Correa said he had a “friendly and very cordial” conversation with Biden, and told the vice president that Ecuador hadn’t sought to be put in the situation of deciding whether to harbor an American fugitive. Correa said Ecuador can’t consider the asylum request until Snowden is on Ecuadorean soil.
“The moment that he arrives, if he arrives, the first thing is we’ll ask the opinion of the United States, as we did in the Assange case with England,” Correa said. “But the decision is ours to make.”