Brazil says will not respond to Snowden asylum bid

Brazil will not be responding to a request for asylum by fugitive US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden, the country's foreign ministry said today.
"There has been a request to the embassy in Moscow," a ministry spokesman told AFP, saying that Brazil "is not going to respond."
Snowden has been in legal limbo for the past nine days in the transit area of Moscow's international airport, but declined to pursue asylum in Russia after being told he would have to stop leaking documents.
He has instead filed asylum requests with 21 countries, including Brazil, in order to avoid extradition to the United States, where he faces arrest on espionage charges.

Petitions have been made on Snowden's behalf to Austria, Bolivia, Brazil, China, Cuba, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain, Switzerland and Venezuela, following earlier requests to Ecuador and Iceland, according to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.
India, Poland and Spain have all rejected the requests and others, including Norway, have said Snowden must be in the country to make an application.
Snowden, a former IT contractor at the National Security Agency, infuriated Washington by disclosing details of vast secret surveillance programs that gathered phone call logs and Internet data.
The United States has revoked his passport and ordered other countries to prevent him from traveling, saying the disclosures have harmed its ability to foil terrorist attacks.