Asylum decision may take months

MOSCOW – Edward Snowden’s request for political asylum in Ecuador could take up to two months to approve, the country’s foreign minister said Wednesday, and he suggested that the U.S. fugitive could end his airport-layover limbo by seeking sanctuary inside the Ecuadorean Embassy.

Snowden has not been officially admitted to Russia and remains in the Sheremetyevo International Airport’s “transit zone.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has encouraged him to hurry up and leave. Snowden might be able to make it to the South American nation’s embassy – about a 20-minute ride at night when traffic thins out – under the diplomatic protection of the ambassador’s car.

“If he goes to the embassy, we will make a decision,” said Ricardo Patino, Ecuador’s foreign minister.

Patino noted that such an arrangement would make Snowden’s plight similar to that of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. For more than a year, Assange has remained at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London after fleeing sexual assault allegations in Sweden and possible extradition to the United States in connection with leaks of classified information.

“We’re still studying it,” Patino said of Snowden’s asylum application. “It took us two months to make a decision in the case of Assange, so do not expect us to make a decision sooner than that.”

Snowden, 30, was a contract analyst for the National Security Agency in Hawaii. He has acknowledged that he leaked data to British and U.S. newspapers about surveillance programs to collect domestic phone records and monitor Internet data. He then fled to Hong Kong.

The United States revoked his passport and filed a request to extradite him, but Hong Kong was still reviewing the request when Snowden flew to Moscow on Sunday.