MOSCOW, July 3 (RIA Novosti) - Bolivia accused European countries of violating international law after a plane carrying the country’s president was diverted and searched Wednesday over suspicion that it might have fugitive US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden on board.
Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca was quoted as saying by CNN that a Bolivia-bound plane, taking President Evo Morales home after an energy meeting in Moscow, had been forced to land in Austria after France and Portugal revoked permission for the plane to enter their airspace.
Bolivia's ambassador to the United Nations described the rerouting as an act of aggression tantamount to "kidnapping," AFP reported.
"The decisions of these countries have violated international law... We are already making procedures to denounce this to the UN secretary general," Bolivia's UN ambassador Sacha Llorenti Soliz told reporters in Geneva, according to Deutsche Welle citing Western news agencies.
The envoy said he had no doubt that the orders to divert Morales' plane came from the United States. The United States has not commented on those allegations.
Later in the day, a spokesman for the French foreign ministry dismissed reports that the presidential plane was denied permission to fly over France and said it was free to cross its territory, but gave no reasons why Bolivian officials had claimed otherwise.
The plane landed in Vienna, where it was held up for more than 14 hours. Austria's Deputy Chancellor Michael Spindelegger said a “voluntary inspection” of the plane, permitted by Morales, revealed that “no one is on board who is not a Bolivian citizen,” Reuters reported.
The plane departed the Austrian capital at around midday Moscow time (8:00 a.m. GMT) and later entered Spanish airspace, according to reports by Western news agencies. At approximately 19:00 Moscow time (3:00 p.m. GMT), the plane landed for refueling at the airport in Las Palmas in Spain’s Canary Islands.
Updated to include information about landing in Spain
