Edward Snowden, the U.S. whistleblower, has not yet formally picked Venezuela as his asylum country but sources clearly indicate that he is likely to choose Venezuela as his final destination.
Responding to a Russian lawmaker's tweet that announced Snowden had accepted Venezuela's offer, Wikileaks, which has provided logistical assistant to Snowden since he fled the United States, tweeted that the American whistleblower had yet to decide.
The Russian lawmaker, Alexey Pushkov, who is the head of the Russian parliament's foreign affairs committee, later deleted the post but the lawmaker again updated that he heard the information from the Russian news channel, Vesti 24.
"The Russian lawmaker concerned has deleted the tweet," said Wikileaks in the twitter post.
"The states concerned will make the announcement if and when the appropriate time comes. The announcement will then be confirmed by us," said the organization.
In an interview with Aljazeera, Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian, who first published the documents that Snowden leaked, said Venezuela would likely be the choice of his final destination.
"They're a bigger country, a stronger country and a richer country with more leverage in international affairs," said Glenn Greenwald, adding Venezuela would probably be the safest country to protect him as the Washington government was reportedly putting paramount pressure on other countries not to take him.
Bolivia and Nicaragua are two other Latin American countries, which recently offered to grant asylum to the American fugitive accused of espionage and theft of government after he leaked U.S. National Security Agency's surveillance programs of monitoring millions of phone calls and movements of the people.
Edward Snowden is believed to be holed up in Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport after he flew from Hong Kong on June 23 but he has not been seen publicly since.
