No wheeling or dealing to extradite Snowden: Obama

The United States won’t be scrambling military jets or engaging in diplomatic bartering to get National Security Agency (NSA) leaker Edward Snowden extradited to the US, said President Barack Obama.

Dismissing him as “a 29-year-old hacker”, Obama sought to downplay the international chase for Snowden, lowering the temperature of an issue that has already raised tensions between the US and uneasy partners Russia and China.

Obama said the damage to US national security has already been done and his top focus now is making sure it can’t happen again.

“I’m not going to have one case with a suspect who we’re trying to extradite suddenly be elevated to the point where I’ve got to start doing wheeling and dealing and trading on a whole host of other issues, simply to get a guy extradited so he can face the justice system,” Obama said at a joint news conference with Senegal’s president Macky Sall.

Snowden turned 30 last week. He was working as a government contractor with security clearance when he seized the NSA documents

His intercontinental efforts to shirk US authorities — taking him from a hotel hideout in Hong Kong to an airport transit zone in Moscow, where he’s believed to be holed up — has already undercut Obama’s efforts to strengthen ties with China and threatened to worsen tensions with Russia.

At the same time, Snowden’s attempts to seek asylum from Ecuador and other nations have underscored Obama’s limited sway in a number of foreign capitals.

Obama said he had not personally called either Russian president Vladimir Putin or Chinese president Xi Jinping to request their cooperation. “I shouldn’t have to,” he declared.

He said such matters are routinely dealt with at a law-enforcement level, calling Snowden’s extradition “not exceptional from a legal perspective”. He said the US has a wide-ranging economic relationship with China that shouldn’t be dwarfed by the hunt for one fugitive, and that the US has had “useful conversations” with Moscow over efforts to return Snowden to the US. Putin has called Snowden a “free man” and refused to turn him over.

“My continued expectation is that Russia or other countries that have talked about potentially providing Mr Snowden asylum recognise that they are a part of an international community and they should be abiding by international law,” Obama said, noting that the US doesn’t have a formal extradition treaty with Russia.

Snowden has acknowledged seizing highly classified documents about US surveillance programmes that collect vast amounts of US phone and internet records. “I get why it’s a fascinating story,” Obama said. “I’m sure there will be a made-for-TV movie somewhere down the line.”

The White House has said Hong Kong’s refusal to detain Snowden has “unquestionably” hurt US relations with China. After Hong Kong’s government claimed it had to allow Snowden to flee because the US got Snowden’s middle name wrong in documents requesting his arrest, Obama’s justice department said the US didn’t buy that excuse, calling it “a pretext for not acting.”