US President Barack Obama cancels Vladimir Putin meeting over Snowden asylum

US President Barack Obama has cancelled a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin after Russia's decision to grant asylum to intelligence leaker Edward Snowden, the White House said.

But Mr Obama will still attend the G20 economic talks in St Petersburg.

A White House aide said Mr Snowden's asylum had deepened the pre-existing tension between the two counties.

The former intelligence contractor has admitted leaking information about US surveillance programmes to the media.

The decision to cancel the talks, announced during a trip by the president to Los Angeles, comes the morning after Mr Obama said he was "disappointed" with Russia's decision to offer Mr Snowden asylum for a year.

.

Keep Reading

•  CS Murkomen names and shames owner of car in a viral video
•  Human cases of bird flu 'an enormous concern': WHO
•  Trader seeks orders to occupy Sh45m public property
•  vivo V30 5G launching in Kenya: Step into the future with style
•  Ndabibi land saga continues to suck in the high and mightyPremium

"We have reached the conclusion that there is not enough recent progress in our bilateral agenda with Russia to hold a US-Russia Summit," the White House said in a statement.

In addition to the "disappointing decision" to grant Snowden temporary asylum, the White House cited a lack of progress on issues ranging from missile defence to human rights.

"We believe it would be more constructive to postpone the summit until we have more results from our shared agenda," the White House said.

The White House reaffirmed Mr Obama's commitment to attending the G20 talks, which take place on 5-6 September in the city of St Petersburg.

Mr Obama and Mr Putin last met in June, on the sidelines of the G8 summit in Northern Ireland.

Mr Snowden, an American former National Security Agency (NSA) technical contractor and CIA worker, in June leaked to the Guardian and Washington Post newspapers documents and details relating to NSA programmes that gather data on telephone calls and emails.

Mr Snowden fled his home in Hawaii, where he worked at a small NSA installation, to Hong Kong, and subsequently to Russia.

He spent more than a month in a transit area of the Moscow airport as the US pressured other countries to deny him asylum. On 1 August, he left the airport after the Russian government said it would give him asylum there for a year.

- BBC