ROME (REUTERS) - Italy cannot support an asylum request from fugitive former US spy agency contractor Edward Snowden, Foreign Minister Emma Bonino said on Thursday.

Speaking in parliament, she said that any asylum request would have to be presented in person at the border or in Italian territory which Snowden, currently believed to be in a Russian airport transit lounge, had not done.

"As a result there do not exist the legal conditions to accept such a request which in the government's view would not be acceptable on a political level either," she said.