too, because we had permission to land in the canary islands. reporter: later bolivian officials accused the united states of spreading a rumor that edward snowden was on board. just hours before president morales told russian television he would consider an asylum request by the fugitive u.s. security analyst. reaction to the incident across south america has been swift. in ecuador the country s foreign minister called it a huge offense against the bolivian leader and the entire region. in a statement the union of south american nations, unasur, condemned what it called the dangerous act taken by france and portugal and the spread of malicious information that former cia agent edward snowden was traveling on this plane. among nations here in south america some fiercely opposed to u.s. foreign policy, this latest incident is being seen as an
quick to blame his imperialist enemy. pressure from the united states, reads this headline, forces european countries to threaten the president s life. bolivians see the refusal to allow the presidential plane to enter key european airspace as a national insult. translator: we came very early to offer up the newspapers and the day s news. the news about the president seems like a very bad incident. that countries discriminate, that cannot happen. they need to ask president morales for forgiveness. reporter: the bolivian leader had been traveling home from an energy summit in moscow when, according to bolivian officials, both france and portugal refused to allow the presidential plane to cross their airspace. the aircraft eventually landed in vienna, where president morales expressed his concern. translator: there has been no explanation as to why i was not allowed to fly over france, portugal, italy, and later spain
warnings as well. those will likely increase throughout the day today. john, do you have an suv? i do. i may need some help getting out of the parking lot here at cnn. are we underwater again? yes. it s raining heavily outside as we speak. count on me. i ll take care of you. all right. talk again soon. thanks, ivan. in the past few hours bolivian president ivo morales arrived home from moscow tie hero s welcome. he was showered by confetti and cheered by crowds who believe mr. morales was the victim of an act of aggression by a number of european countries because they denied his jet overnight rights because they had suspicions that intelligence leaker edward snowden may have been on board. and as matthew chance reports, this diplomatic incident has sparked a furious reaction across latin america. reporter: on the streets of bolivia s capital there s outrage at western treatment of ivo morales, their popular socialist president. the bolivian media has been
mr. obama spoke with german chancellor angela merkel by phone on wednesday. both agreeing to hold a high-level meeting about this in the coming days. and the european parliament will decide today on a special committee to investigate the spying allegations. for the very latest now on the fallout from the edward snowden affair, fred fligpleitgen joins live from moscow. the french may be apologizing to the bolivian president but they remain very unhappy with the united states, calling for a delay in some very big trade talks. reporter: yeah, john, you re absolutely right. there s many people who actually believe it was quite strange for france to deny evo morales s plane the right to fly over its territory since the french have been the harshest critics of the u.s. and of course have even called for delaying talks on a trans-atlantic free trade agreement, which is a huge thing between europe and america. so quite an interesting position the french are taking. the french of course still