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Snowden and NSA leaks

Spain says will not be apologizing to Bolivia for presidential jet incident

Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo claimed that the airspace over Spain had never been closed for Evo Morales’s jet

Photo EPA/ITAR-TASS

Photo EPA/ITAR-TASS

MADRID, July 5 (Itar-Tass) - Spain will not be bringing apologies to Bolivia for the problems that arose earlier this week with the transit of the Bolivian President Evo Morales’s jet via the airspace of a number of European countries, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo told Spanish television Friday.

He claimed that the airspace over Spain had never been closed for Evo Morales’s jet and the government had never annulled his initially scheduled stopover.

Garcia-Margallo also said that the initial data available to the Spanish Foreign Ministry indicated clearly the presence of the former CIA technical analyst and gaffe-blower Edward Snowden aboard the presidential jet but just a single word of refutation on the part of President Morales would be enough to realize the initial data was erroneous.

Garcia-Margallo also commented on the tough criticism that the Venezuelan President, Nicolas Maduro, leveled at Spain in connection with the Morales jet incident.

Maduro’s words are based on a lack of knowledge of real facts and that is why Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy Brey personally provided explanations to him for how the events around Morales’s transit via European countries developed on the night of the incident.

Thursday, Bolivian ambassador in Moscow Maria Luisa Ramos told Itar-Tass about the measures that the Bolivian authorities planned to take in response to the situation around the presidential jet. She said representatives of the government met with the ambassadors of the countries that had forbidden the presidential jet to enter their airspace.

“But we won’t stop at that and the problem should be taken up at the UN because those governments must present explanations for what actually happened,” Ramos said.

“Quite obviously, the issue won’t drop off the agenda with President Morales’s safe arrival home,” she said. “It’s incredible that some countries should have the liberty of mockeries and putting the lives of /other countries’/ presidents at risk.

“Bolivia will petition to all the existing international agencies so as to get clarifications and due explanations,” Ramos said.

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