President Vladimir Putin Wednesday said Moscows relations with Washington outweighed the squabbles over fugitive US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden,who has applied for temporary asylum in Russia. But Putin also defended Moscows right to an independent foreign policy after the United States renewed calls for the extradition of Snowden. Relations between states are much more important than squabbles surrounding the work of security services, Putin said after overseeing military exercises in the far-flung eastern Siberian region of Chita. Snowden,a former National Security Agency contractor,has been marooned at Moscows Sheremetyevo airport since June 23 after revealing that Washington has been seizing huge amounts of Internet and telephone data around the world. Russia has an independent foreign policy and we will follow it, Putin said in televised remarks. We cannot and will not behave like other countries, he said,in an apparent reference to an incident earlier this month when several European countries closed their airspace to Bolivian President Evo Moraless plane amid speculation that Snowden was on board. The latest flare-up in ties between Moscow and Washington comes as Putin is set to host US President Barack Obama for a bilateral summit in Moscow followed by the G20 summit in Saint Petersburg in early September. The White House has voiced strong opposition to Snowdens request and has criticised Moscow for providing the 30-year-old with a propaganda platform. We believe there is ample legal justification for the return of Mr Snowden to the US,where he has been charged with serious felonies, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday. In a related development on Wednesday,the lawyer assisting Snowden said the leaker does not rule out applying to become a citizen. He does not rule out the possibility of asking for Russian citizenship, Anatoly Kucherena,who helped Snowden put together his asylum bid. Kucherena suggested that Snowden would soon be able to leave the transit zone of Sheremetyevo airport. He turns to the Federal Migration Service (FMS) and the FMS will give him a certificate within the next seven days that his documents have been accepted, he said. With the official certificate that an asylum application would grant him,Snowden will be able to leave the airport and move around freely,Kucherena said. He asked me to continue helping him, the lawyer said,adding he would assist the former NSA contractor pro bono.
