REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, BUENOS AIRES -- An attorney for ex-intelligence contractor Edward Snowden said Saturday that the whistleblower met Argentina's President Cristina Kirchner in April and discussed US surveillance operations.

The meeting with Kirchner, Snowden's first with a head of state, took place when the president visited Russia at the end of April, Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, told Blue FM.

"I think she deserves the credit for having taken the initiative to meet with Snowden, for having taken more than two-and-a-half hours to talk with him," Romero said in an interview with the Buenos Aires Herald while on a three-day visit to the country.

"It's notable that she is the first foreign leader to meet him," he said.

"The fact that she has requested to meet and that she has engaged as vigorously as she did shows that foreign leaders are not buying the American foreign policy line."

Snowden has lived in exile in Russia since 2013 after revealing mass spying programs by the United States and its allies.

Argentine news outlet TN reported that some of the documents released by Snowden showed Britain spied on Argentina to monitor the Falkland Islands, which the two countries went to war over in 1982.

Snowden "wants to meet with any political leaders who request to meet him," Romero said.

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