WASHINGTON (AP) — National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, believed to be in legal limbo in the Moscow airport, is expanding his requests for asylum to another 19 countries, including China, according to WikiLeaks.
WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy group that has adopted Snowden and his cause, on Monday night posted a statement said to be from Snowden that slammed President Barack Obama for "using citizenship as a weapon."
"Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person," Snowden says in the statement. "Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum.
"Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me."
WikiLeaks legal adviser Sarah Harrison delivered the requests for asylum to an official at the Russian consulate at the Moscow airport on Sunday, according to the website. WikiLeaks says some of the requests have already been delivered to the appropriate embassies.
The WikiLeaks statement said requests were made to China, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, India and several European countries. Snowden had planned earlier to seek asylum in Ecuador and has requested asylum in Russia.
The asylum requests reported by WikiLeaks and the Snowden statement could not be independently authenticated.
Snowden, who has been on the run since releasing sensitive NSA documents, is believed to have been in Moscow airport's transit zone since his arrival from Hong Kong on June 23. The U.S. has annulled his passport, and Ecuador, where he had hoped to get asylum, has been giving mixed signals about offering him shelter.
After Snowden applied for political asylum to remain in Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters in Moscow that Snowden would have to stop leaking U.S. secrets if he wanted asylum there — and he added that Snowden seemed unwilling to stop publishing leaks of classified material.
At the same time, Putin said he had no plans to turn over Snowden to the United States.
The expanded requests for asylum come as the Obama administration contends with European allies angry about the release of documents that alleged U.S. eavesdropping on European Union diplomats.
Obama, in an African news conference with Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, said the U.S. would provide allies with information about new reports that the NSA had bugged EU offices in Washington, New York and Brussels. But he also suggested such activity by governments would hardly be unusual.
"We should stipulate that every intelligence service —not just ours, but every European intelligence service, every Asian intelligence service, wherever there's an intelligence service — here's one thing that they're going to be doing: They're going to be trying to understand the world better, and what's going on in world capitals around the world," he said. "If that weren't the case, then there'd be no use for an intelligence service."
The latest issue concerns allegations, published in the German newsweekly Der Spiegel, of U.S. spying on European officials. French President Francois Hollande demanded Monday that the U.S. immediately stop any such eavesdropping and suggested the widening controversy could jeopardize next week's opening of trans-Atlantic trade talks between the United States and Europe.
"We cannot accept this kind of behavior from partners and allies," Hollande said on French television.
German government spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters in Berlin, "Eavesdropping on friends is unacceptable." He declared, "We're not in the Cold War anymore."
Even before the latest disclosures, talks at the upcoming free-trade sessions were expected to be fragile, with disagreements surfacing over which items should be covered in or excluded from an agreement. The United States has said there should be no exceptions. But France has called for exempting certain cultural products, and other Europeans do not appear eager to give up longtime agricultural subsidies.
Obama said the Europeans "are some of the closest allies that we have in the world." But he added: "I guarantee you that in European capitals, there are people who are interested in, if not what I had for breakfast, at least what my talking points might be should I end up meeting with their leaders. That's how intelligence services operate."
Nonetheless, Obama said he'd told his advisers to "evaluate everything that's being claimed" and promised to share the results with allies.
Meanwhile, the Interfax news agency said a Russian consular official has confirmed that Snowden had asked for asylum in Russia.
Interfax cited Kim Shevchenko, the duty officer at the Russian Foreign Ministry's consular office in Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, as saying that Snowden's representative, Harrison, handed over his request Sunday.
"If he wants to go somewhere and there are those who would take him, he is welcome to do so," Putin said. "If he wants to stay here, there is one condition: He must stop his activities aimed at inflicting damage on our American partners, no matter how strange it may sound coming from my lips."
Obama said "there have been high-level discussions with the Russians" about Snowden's situation.
"We don't have an extradition treaty with Russia. On the other hand, you know, Mr. Snowden, we understand, has traveled there without a valid passport, without legal papers. And you know we are hopeful that the Russian government makes decisions based on the normal procedures regarding international travel and the normal procedures regarding international travel and the normal interactions that law enforcement has. So I can confirm that."
Putin didn't mention any Snowden effort to seek asylum in Russia, and spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to say what the Russian response might be. Putin insisted that Snowden wasn't a Russian agent and that Russian security agencies hadn't contacted him.
Three U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to publicly discuss the Snowden case, said Washington's efforts were focused primarily on persuading Russia to deport Snowden either directly to the United States or to a third country, possibly in eastern Europe, that would then hand him over to U.S. authorities.
In a sign of the distrust generated by the Der Spiegel report, the German government said it had launched a review of its secure government communications network and the EU's executive, the European Commission, ordered "a comprehensive ad hoc security sweep."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday he didn't know the details of the allegations, but he still played them down, maintaining that many nations undertake various activities to protect their national interests. Kerry failed to quell the outrage from allies, including France, Germany and Italy.
A spokesman for Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, said, "The European Union has demanded and expects full and urgent clarification by the U.S. regarding the allegations."
According to Der Spiegel's report, which it said was partly based on information leaked by Snowden, NSA planted bugs in the EU's diplomatic offices in Washington and infiltrated the building's computer network. Similar measures were taken at the EU's mission to the United Nations in New York, the magazine said.
It also reported that the NSA used secure facilities at NATO headquarters in Brussels to dial into telephone maintenance systems that would have allowed it to intercept senior officials' calls and Internet traffic at a key EU office nearby.
As for Snowden, White House national security spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said the White House won't comment on specific asylum requests but reiterated its message to all countries that he "needs to be expelled back to the U.S. based on the fact that he doesn't have travel documents and the charges pending against him."
Regarding possible effects on U.S. interactions with Russia, she said it remains the case "that we don't want this issue to negatively impact the bilateral relationship."
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Associated Press writers Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow, Sarah Di Lorenzo in Paris, Frank Jordans and Geir Moulson in Berlin, Elena Becatoros in Athens, Raf Casert in Brussels, Deb Riechmann in Brunei, Nicole Winfield in Rome, Julie Pace in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

Putin: Snowden 'must stop leaking US secrets ' to stay in Russia

By Michael Bohm

Is Edward Snowden a traitor or hero? While public opinion in the U.S. clearly favors traitor, Russian politicians and the Kremlin-friendly media have turned him into a "hero of democracy" and a "U.S. dissident."

Alexei Pushkov, the State Duma's International Affairs Committee head, perhaps best represented the prevailing government — and, by default, popular Russian — view when he recently wrote on Twitter: "By listening in on phone calls and tracking Internet activity, U.S. intelligence agencies have violated the laws of their own country. In this sense, Snowden, like [WikiLeaks founder Julian] Assange, is a human rights activist. … They are new dissidents."

If Snowden receives asylum in Russia, he will face a serious moral dilemma: His will be living in a country with a far worse record than the U.S. on government abuse and transparency. 

But Pushkov is wrong on several counts. First, the NSA did not indiscriminately eavesdrop on the private phone calls of Americans without a court order. It tracked "metadata" by sorting general information about calling patterns, not the content of the calls.

Second, the NSA program is fully legal and has been upheld by several U.S. court rulings, which likened it to what the U.S. Postal Service does when it reads addresses that are written on envelopes. The courts ruled that Americans willingly give up this information to third parties to complete their calls and send their letters. At the same time, however, the contents within the envelope, like the content of phone calls, are constitutionally protected against search and seizure without a court warrant.

Although the NSA surveillance program was secret, the U.S. legislative branch (the House and Senate intelligence committees) approved the program, and the judicial branch (the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) provided constant oversight during the seven years of its existence. Since Snowden did not reveal anything illegal on the NSA's part, he would not be protected under U.S. whistleblower-protection laws.

Nonetheless, Pushkov wrote on Twitter that he supports the idea of political asylum for Snowden because he is being "persecuted" by the U.S. government "on political grounds."

This is the same line Pushkov and Kremlin-friendly analysts have used to defend another "U.S. dissident" — Private Bradley Manning, who released 700,000 classified documents to WikiLeaks, the overwhelming majority of which were also not protected under U.S. whistleblower laws.

Instead of engaging in Assange-like vigilantism by leaking classified information indiscriminately, Snowden should have appealed to U.S. lawmakers, the Freedom of Information Act or the inspector general to declassify the NSA program to achieve his self-proclaimed goal of sparking a public discussion and debate over the program. Manning should have leaked only those documents that revealed true government abuse, certainly not those that revealed the identity of U.S. informants or classified diplomatic cables that had no public service value whatsoever.

In Snowden's case, the leaks looked more like the works of a narcissistic Herostratus. According to statements he made to the South China Morning Post newspaper and published Monday, he joined Booz Allen Hamilton, an NSA contractor, with the express intent of getting a security clearance and leaking classified NSA documents. Meanwhile, Manning's motive was to take revenge on the U.S. for the failures and traumas he incurred in the army as a result of a gender-identity disorder. These are hardly the profiles of a true whistleblower.

By claiming that Snowden and Manning are genuine whistleblowers who have become victims of U.S. government persecution, Pushkov and other Russian opinion makers have flipped the two scandals completely on their heads. This brings back echoes of the "Free Angela Davis!" slogan, a massive Soviet propaganda campaign in the late 1960s and early 1970s to defend U.S. Communist Party leader Angela Davis. Davis faced charges in the U.S. of being an accomplice in a murder case, but the Kremlin claimed she was persecuted exclusively for her political beliefs.

Interestingly, Russia's own top whistleblower — Alexei Navalny — is portrayed by the same pro-Kremlin analysts and media outlets as the subversive leader of a fifth column who is financed by the U.S. State Department to carry out an Orange-style revolution in Russia. Another prominent Russian whistleblower, Sergei Magnitsky, died in 2009 after being denied medical care in pretrial detention and after he exposed a $230 million corruption scheme among officials at the Interior Ministry and tax inspectorate.

If there is anything Orwellian about the Snowden scandal, it is not that the U.S. has become a "Big Brother," listening in on Americans' private conversations. It is the way Russia has lionized two U.S. criminals, while criminalizing Russia's true whistleblowers and opposition leaders. Navalny is being tried on embezzlement charges, while Magnitsky is being tried -- posthumously -- on tax evasion charges.

During a recent meeting with journalists from RT state television, President Vladimir Putin commented on the NSA surveillance program, saying disingenuously that government eavesdropping on its citizens is "acceptable if it is done within the limits of the law."

If Putin was referring to Russian law, he should answer the following questions: Who makes, interprets and enforces Russia's laws? Independent bodies with checks and balances, or Kremlin-loyal organs? How many times do Russian courts approve the warrants after the surveillance has already occurred, and how many times does the FSB listen in on private conversations without a warrant?

Take, for example, the eavesdropping on opposition leader Boris Nemtsov's phone conversations in December in which he used abusive language to criticize several colleagues in the opposition movement. Nemtsov's phone conversations were published by the Kremlin-friendly Life News website three days before a planned protest march in an attempt to split the opposition leadership. Andrei Soldatov and other independent intelligence analysts believe that only Russian intelligence agencies have the equipment to eavesdrop on Nemtsov and other opposition leaders.

This is clearly a violation of Russian law because Nemtsov's conversations were exclusively private. They did not belong to the category of "the public has a right to know" because they did not expose corruption, abuse of power or any other crime.

Thus, while the NSA surveillance program was aimed at finding terrorists in a haystack, the FSB, it would seem, is more interested in smearing opposition leaders. But, then again, as United Russian leader Irina Yarovaya infamously said recently, the country's opposition leaders "do not differ at all from terrorists."

Forty years ago in the U.S., spying on the opposition led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon and the prosecution of 43 top officials and executors of the crime. In Russia, those who spy on the opposition are, most likely, first in line to receive promotions and big bonuses.

Imagine if there was a "Russian Snowden" who worked in the FSB, leaked classified information to a British newspaper about the agency's massive internal surveillance programs and fled the country. It is doubtful that Pushkov and others would hail him as a political dissident or a brave symbol of democracy, human rights and government transparency.

The irony is that if Snowden ever does receive asylum in Russia, he will be living in a country that has a far worse record than the U.S. in terms of government abuse and transparency. And if Snowden is true to his stated values and wants to continue his mission in Russia as a libertarian and privacy rights activist, he will definitely have his work cut out for him.

Before Russian politicians and the media get too worked up over the U.S. persecution of "dissidents" like Snowden and Manning, they should spend a little more attention to their own dissidents — whistleblowers, human rights activists and members of the opposition who are being harassed, intimidated and jailed by the state. Even Angela Davis would agree with that.

The Moscow Times 

By Louis Charbonneau
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - How deep is the divide separating Russia and the United States on Syria? A photo from the recent G8 summit in Northern Ireland says it all - two grim-faced leaders slouched in their chairs, Barack Obama biting his lip and Vladimir Putin staring at the floor.
The awkward photo opportunity, which went viral on the Internet, highlights the increasingly tense relationship between the former Cold War foes who find it difficult to agree on a series of high-profile issues, including Syria and a fugitive U.S. intelligence contractor whom Putin refuses to extradite.
Washington and Moscow have been trying since May to organize an international peace conference to bring an end to the violence. But hopes that such a conference will take place anytime soon - if at all - are fading quickly.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov originally announced that they would try to hold the conference, which is intended to bring rebels and representatives of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government to the negotiating table, by the end of May.
But the date keeps slipping. First it was bumped to June, then July. Earlier this week U.N.-Arab League peace mediator Lakhdar Brahimi, who held talks with senior U.S. and Russian officials in Geneva, ruled out a peace conference before August.
Diplomats at the United Nations in New York say it is unclear whether the peace conference will take place at all.
"It's not looking too good," a senior Western diplomat said.
The point of the conference was to revive a plan adopted last year in Geneva. At that time, Washington and Moscow agreed on the need for a transitional Syrian government, but left open the question of whether Assad could participate in the process.
The United States, like the Syrian rebels, says Assad and his family should play no role in a transitional government, though Russia says there should be no conditions on the talks.
Kerry and Lavrov will discuss Syria again next week on the sidelines of an Association of Southeast Asian Nations conference in Brunei, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
ASSAD WON'T HAND OVER POWER
There are other sticking points in discussions on how to make what U.N. diplomats have been calling "Geneva 2" take place at all - who will represent Assad's government and the Syrian opposition at the negotiating table. There is still no agreement on the lineup of potential negotiators. Then there is the issue of whether Assad's other key ally Iran should participate, as Russia wants but Western governments dislike.
Recently, Assad's forces have enjoyed some military successes. They recaptured two towns near the Lebanese border, while rebels complain about insufficient arms and ammunition.
This, diplomats say, makes both Assad's government and the opposition more reluctant to seek a compromise and diplomacy in Geneva - Assad because he thinks he can win the war militarily, and the opposition because it does not want to negotiate from a position of weakness and is holding out for more weapons.
Assad's foreign minister, Walid al-Moualem, told a news conference earlier this week that authorities were ready to form a broad-based government of national unity. But he made clear that they were not planning to give up control of Syria.
"We head to Geneva not to hand over power to another side," he said. "Whoever on the other side imagines this, I advise them not to go to Geneva."
Some diplomats say the ebbing hopes for a serious peace conference highlights the impotence of the United Nations and Brahimi, who for months has threatened to quit the post like his predecessor, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Annan quit the job last year out of frustration at the way the dispute between Russia, Assad's main arms supplier, and the United States, which supports the rebels and recently announced it would begin providing them with arms, has left the Security Council in a state of paralysis on the Syrian issue.
Russia and China long ago ruled out sanctioning Syria and have vetoed three Western and Gulf Arab-backed resolutions condemning Assad's government for an increasingly sectarian war that the United Nations says has killed more than 90,000.
GRIM PROSPECTS FOR DIPLOMACY
Richard Gowan of New York University predicted that a collapse of Kerry's peace conference plan will increase pressure on Obama to send more and heavier weapons to the Syrian rebels.
"If the Geneva proposal fails, there will be pressure on the U.S. to move beyond its current offer of light weapons to the rebels, especially if Assad's forces score more victories," Gowan said.
"Kerry's bet on Geneva may backfire by demonstrating that diplomacy is really a lost cause, but perhaps Kerry, who has reportedly argued for air strikes, is fine with that," he said.
Washington's cautious move to begin arming moderate Syrian rebels - not Islamist militants who are increasingly present in the conflict - came after it said Assad's forces had crossed a "red line" by using chemical weapons.
The Syrian government denies the charge and says the rebels have used chemical arms. It also accuses Western and Gulf Arab governments of arming the opposition.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, now in his second and final term, is increasingly worried that he may be remembered as the man who failed in Syria, U.N. diplomats told Reuters. He has even considered stepping in himself to try to broker a peace deal if Brahimi throws in the towel, the envoys added.
Outgoing U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice, who will soon take up the post of Obama's national security adviser, said earlier this week that the council's failure to take decisive action on Syria was a "moral and strategic disgrace."
"The repeated failure of the Security Council to unify on the crucial issue of Syria I think is a stain on this body and something that I will forever regret - even though I don't believe that outcome is the product of the action of the United States," Rice said.
British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant echoed Rice's unusually strong words, which were clearly aimed at Russia and China. He also defended the United Nations against suggestions that the organization itself was somehow responsible for the Security Council's failure to act on Syria.
"People talk about it being a stain on the United Nations but you can't blame the United Nations," he said, adding that the responsibility lies with its member states.
"We have tried very hard over the last two years to secure some leverage for the Security Council in this crisis as it's unfolded," he said. "Unfortunately we've had three resolutions vetoed by Russia and China ... Events on the ground might have unfolded very differently had those resolutions been adopted."
A March 2011 council resolution authorized military intervention in Libya and gave a green light for NATO to mount an operation to protect civilians that led to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's ouster and death at the hands of rebel forces.
No Western nations have called for something similar in Syria, and Russia has vowed to prevent a similar move in Syria.
There may be no swift end to the war. And even if the opposition were to prevail, it is unlikely to bring stability.
"The Syrian civil war is likely to go on for years," said Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations.
"It is not just that it is proving harder and taking longer to oust the Assad regime than many expected," he told Reuters. "It is also that even if the regime were to be removed, what would follow would be a prolonged round of fighting among opposition forces who disagree on just about everything except their opposition to the current regime."

(Reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Additional reporting by Dominic Evans in Beirut; Editing by Alistair Bell and Eric Beech)

MOSCOW (AP) — Yes, he's at a Moscow airport, and no, you can't have him.

Russian President Vladimir Putin gave the first official acknowledgment of the whereabouts of National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden on Tuesday and promptly rejected U.S. pleas to turn him over.
Snowden, who is charged with violating American espionage laws, fled Hong Kong over the weekend, touching off a global guessing game over where he went and frustrating U.S. efforts to bring him to justice.
Putin said Snowden is in the transit zone of Sheremetyevo Airport and has not passed through Russian immigration, meaning he technically is not in Russia and thus is free to travel wherever he wants.
After arriving Sunday on a flight from Hong Kong, Snowden registered for a Havana-bound flight Monday en route to Venezuela and then possible asylum in Ecuador, but he didn't board the plane.
Speculation has been rife that Russian security services have been talking to Snowden and might want to keep him in Russia for a more thorough debriefing, but Putin denied that.
"Our special services never worked with Mr. Snowden and aren't working with him today," Putin said at a news conference during a visit to Finland.
Because Moscow has no extradition agreement with Washington, it cannot meet the U.S. request, he said.
"Mr. Snowden is a free man, and the sooner he chooses his final destination the better it is for us and for him," Putin said. "I hope it will not affect the businesslike character of our relations with the U.S. and I hope that our partners will understand that."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday that the U.S. wants Russia to show respect for the rule of law and comply with common practices when it comes to fugitives from justice.
Putin's staunch refusal to consider deportation shows his readiness to further challenge Washington at a time when U.S.-Russian relations are already strained over Syria and other issues, including a Russian ban on adoptions by Americans.
"Just showing America that we don't care about our relations, we are down to basically a Cold War pattern: The enemy of your government is our friend," said Masha Lipman of the Carnegie Moscow Center.
"The Russian administration has not come that far, but we don't know what it's up to," she said.
Despite Putin's denial, security experts believe Russia's special services wouldn't miss the chance to question a man who is believed to hold reams of classified U.S. documents and could shed light on how the U.S. intelligence agencies collect information.
Igor Korotchenko, director of the Center for Global Arms Trade and editor of National Defense Magazine, said Snowden would be of particular interest because little is known about digital espionage.
"The security services would be happy to enter into contact with Mr. Snowden," Korotchenko said.
Russia also has relished using Snowden's revelations to turn the tables on the U.S. over its criticism of Russia's rights record.
Putin compared Snowden to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been given asylum in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, saying that both men were labeled criminals but consider themselves rights activists and champions of freedom of information.
"Ask yourself a question: Should people like that be extradited so that they put them in prison?" he said. "In any case, I would prefer not to deal with such issues. It's like shearing a piglet: a lot of squealing and little wool."
In an apparent reference to claims that Russia could have played a role in Snowden's exit from Hong Kong, Putin said his arrival in Moscow was a "complete surprise" and dismissed such accusations as "ravings and sheer nonsense."
"He doesn't need a visa or any other documents, and as a transit passenger he has the right to buy a ticket and fly wherever he wants," Putin said.
Snowden, 30, is a former CIA employee who later was hired as a contractor for the NSA. In that job, he gained access to documents that he gave to newspapers the Guardian and The Washington Post to expose what he contends are privacy violations by an authoritarian government.
Snowden also told the South China Morning Post newspaper in Hong Kong that "the NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cellphone companies to steal all of your SMS data." He is believed to have more than 200 additional sensitive documents in laptops he is carrying.
Russian news media had reported that Snowden remained in a transit zone at the airport, which is separate from regular departure areas. He has not been seen by any of the journalists who have been roaming Sheremetyevo in search of him, furthering speculation that he had been secreted away.
The Interfax news agency, citing an unidentified airport official, said Snowden could be staying in a room in the transit zone normally reserved for flight crews and other personnel.
Legally, an arriving air passenger only crosses the border after clearing Russian immigration checks.
Earlier Tuesday, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov rejected the U.S. push to turn over Snowden, but he wouldn't specify his whereabouts, saying only that he hadn't crossed the Russian border.
Kerry called for "calm and reasonableness."
"We would hope that Russia would not side with someone who is a fugitive from justice," Kerry said at a news conference in Saudi Arabia.
The U.S. has revoked Snowden's passport.
A representative of WikiLeaks has been traveling with Snowden, and the secret-spilling organization is believed to be assisting him in arranging asylum. Assange, the group's founder, said Monday that Snowden was only passing through Russia and had applied for asylum in Ecuador, Iceland and possibly other countries.
A high-ranking Ecuadorean official told The Associated Press that Russia and Ecuador were discussing where Snowden could go, saying the process could take days. He also said Ecuador's ambassador to Moscow had not seen or spoken to Snowden. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly.
The Kremlin has previously said Russia would be ready to consider Snowden's request for asylum.
Some observers said Snowden's revelations have provided the Kremlin with propaganda arguments to counter the U.S. criticism of Russia's crackdown on opposition and civil activists under Putin.
"They would use Snowden to demonstrate that the U.S. government doesn't sympathize with the ideals of freedom of information, conceals key information from the public and stands ready to open criminal proceedings against those who oppose it," Konstantin Remchukov, the editor of independent daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta, said on Ekho Moskvy radio.
Putin has accused the U.S. State Department of instigating protests in Moscow against his re-election for a third term in March and has taken an anti-American posture that plays well with his core support base of industrial workers and state employees.
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Huuhtanen reported from Naantali, Finland. Associated Press writers Lynn Berry in Moscow and Michael Weissenstein and Gonzalo Solano in Quito, Ecuador, contributed to this story.