(26 Jun 2013)
AP TELEVISION
1. Mid of Icelandic Foreign Minister Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson and German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle at news conference
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson, Icelandic Foreign Minister:
"Well, I am not aware of any talks between WikiLeaks and the government. And if Mr. Snowden comes to Iceland he just has to ask for asylum like anyone else."
3. Mid of photographer
4. Mid of Sveinsson and Westerwelle shaking hands
STORYLINE:
Iceland's Foreign Minister on Wednesday said that he is not aware of any talks between his government and WikiLeaks with regards to fugitive National Security Agency (NSA) leaker Edward Snowden.
At a news conference with German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle in Berlin, Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson also told reporters: "If Mr. Snowden comes to Iceland he just has to ask for asylum like anyone else."
Icelandic officials have confirmed receiving an informal request for asylum conveyed by WikiLeaks, which has strong links to the tiny North Atlantic nation.
But authorities there have insisted that US citizen Snowden must be on Icelandic soil before making a formal request.
The US State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said the US has made demands to a number of governments, including Ecuador, that Snowden be barred from any international travel other than to be returned to the US.
Ventrell said he did not know if that included Iceland.
WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, and attorneys for WikiLeaks accused the US of forcing foreign nations to refuse asylum to Snowden.
WikiLeaks counsel Michael Ratner said Snowden is protected as a whistleblower by the same international treaties that the US has in the past used to criticise policies in China and African nations.
Snowden has acknowledged revealing details of top-secret surveillance programmes that sweep up millions of phone and Internet records daily.
He is a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee who later was hired as a contractor through Booz Allen to be a computer systems analyst.
In that job, he gained access to documents - many of which he has given to The Guardian and The Washington Post to expose what he contends are privacy violations by an authoritarian government.
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