Fugitive US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden has scrapped his request for asylum from Russia and asked 20 other countries to take him in, the Kremlin said Tuesday.

Poland immediately rejected the petitions while an Indian foreign ministry spokesman said "we have concluded that we see no reason to accede to the request."

The WikiLeaks anti-secrecy website that is helping the 30-year-old former National Security Agency contractor said he had sent out applications to 13 European countries as well as six Latin American nations along with China and India.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman in Beijing said: "I've seen some reports of his petition for political asylum in some countries but I have no information about that."

Austria, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Spain confirmed they had received the request but argued it was legally invalid because it was not filed from inside their respective countries. Ireland too said it could not accept an asylum request brought in this way.

France and Switzerland said they had not yet received Snowden's application.

Snowden has been stuck in a Moscow airport's transit zone since arriving there on June 23 from Hong Kong after releasing explosive allegations about Washington's vast global spying program.

The 30-year-old lashed out at the United States late on Monday, accusing US officials of pressuring foreign leaders to refuse him refuge after Washington charged him with espionage for going through with his leaks.

"These are the old, bad tools of political aggression," Snowden said in a statement published by the anti-secrecy WikiLeaks group.

"Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me."

Snowden's latest major leak about US spying on EU countries has angered many European governments and threatened to derail preparations for delicate talks on a massive free trade deal between Washington and Brussels.

European Parliament president Martin Schulz stressed that he was sympathetic to an asylum request by fugitive US intelligence leaker Snowden and compared reports of US spying on EU offices to "KGB methods".

WikiLeaks said Snowden had also applied for asylum in Brazil, Bolivia; Cuba; Ecuador; Germany; Italy; the Netherlands; Nicaragua and Venezuela.

Putin on Monday said Snowden was welcome to stay as long as he stopped leaking US intelligence reports.

"If he (Snowden) wants to remain here there is one condition -- he should stop his work aimed at inflicting damage on our American partners no matter how strange this may sound coming from me," Putin told reporters.

But the Kremlin's official spokesman said on Tuesday that Snowden withdrew his request after learning of Putin's condition.

"He abandoned his intention and his request to receive the chance of staying in Russia," spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Snowden had remained quiet and out of sight of reporters since arriving in the transit zone of Moscow Sheremetyevo Airport.

He had planned to travel on to Cuba the following day but never got on the flight because he apparently lacked the proper boarding papers after his US travel passport was revoked.

Snowden late Monday issued his first statement through WikiLeaks since his arrival in Moscow -- a blistering attack on the United States.

"Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum."

Snowden also called the treatment of Ecuador -- a country to which he first applied for asylum and whose London embassy is harboring WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange -- of those who stand up to US interests "an example to the world".

Putin said on Monday that Snowden sees himself as a political crusader for moral justice akin to the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize winning Soviet-era dissident Andrei Sakharov.

The Kremlin chief suggested that this meant that Snowden was unlikely to meet Russia's condition of ending his leaks against the United States.

Putin's spokesman Peskov said on Tuesday that Snowden had personally informed Russian officials that he was no longer interested in staying in Moscow.

But Peskov also emphasized that Russia had no intention of handing the fugitive over to the United States.

"The handover of Snowden to a country like the United States that applies the death penalty is impossible," Peskov told reporters. (AFP)