The plane carrying Bolivia’s President Evo Morales home from a meeting in Moscow has been diverted to Austria because of suspicions that NSA leaker Edward Snowden might be on board.

Bolivia’s foreign minister David Choquehuanca denies that Snowden was on the plane, and says, “we don’t know who invented this lie, but we want to denounce to the international community this injustice with the plane of President Evo Morales.”

(UPDATE:  An Austrian foreign ministry official, Alexander Schallenberg, tells the AFP news agency that Snowden was not on board the Bolivian leader's aircraft.)

After Morales’ plane took off from Moscow, France and Portugal refused to allow it to cross their air space as it does with any other flight heading from Europe to South America.

“Portugal owes us an explanation. France owes us an explanation.  The president's life was put at risk,” Choquehuanca said.

The US wants to arrest Snowden for taking top-secret information from National Security Agency computers while he worked for an NSA subcontractor, fleeing to Hong Kong, and leaking that info to The Guardian and Der Spiegel.  Snowden was holed-up in a capsule hotel in the Moscow Airport.

Bolivia and Venezuela both expressed interest in granting Snowden asylum, practically the only states in the world willing to do so.  Snowden’s options seem to narrow with every hour, with Brazil, Finland, Germany, India, and Poland all flat-out rejecting his asylum bids.  Other countries say they might consider it, but only if Snowden makes the application on their respective soil. 

But that’s unlikely, if the powers-that-be are willing to ground an airplane carrying a President of a sovereign nation just to get this guy.  I can't remember that EVER happening.  Compare the events of today with the nonchalance of President Barack Obama last week, claiming that he would not “be scrambling jets to get a 29-year old hacker”.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro had earlier said that the only thing he’d be bringing back from that meeting in Moscow was Oil and Gas contracts.