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NBC NEWS - A bid by Edward Snowden for Icelandic citizenship failed when the country's parliament voted not to debate it before the summer recess, lawmakers said on Friday. The vote leaves Snowden - believed to be staying in a transit area at a Moscow airport - with one option fewer as he seeks a country to shelter him from U.S. espionage charges. Six members of parliament tabled a proposal late on Thursday to grant Snowden citizenship after they received a request from him via WikiLeaks, opposition parliamentarian Birgitta Jonsdottir said. But a majority of parliamentarians voted late on Thursday against allowing the proposal to be put on the agenda, a day before parliament went into summer recess. It does not reconvene until September. Advertise | AdChoices "Snowden has formally requested citizenship. But nothing is now going to happen. We could not even vote on it," Jonsdottir told Reuters. In a letter dated July 4, posted on Jonsdottir's blog, Snowden wrote that he had been left "de facto-stateless" by his government, which revoked his passport after he fled the country and leaked information about U.S. surveillance operations. He has sought asylum in a number of countries, but most, including Iceland, say he must be on their soil for his application to be accepted. His request for citizenship was a different tack, hoping that Iceland would give him a passport, as it has done in at least one similar case in the past. "I appreciate that Iceland, a small but significant country in the world community, shows such courage and commitment to its higher laws and ideals," he wrote in the letter. Under Icelandic law, parliament can grant citizenship to foreigners, which can otherwise usually only be gained through naturalization after a period of residence. Chess master Bobby Fischer was granted Icelandic citizenship by parliament after he got into trouble with the United States over tax evasion and breaking sanctions by playing a match in Yugoslavia in 1992. After years living abroad, he was detained in Japan, where he applied for and was awarded Icelandic citizenship in 2005. He spent his last years in Iceland before dying in 2008. Iceland's recently elected center-right government is seen as far less willing to engage in an international dispute with the United States than the previous government, even if it will want to maintain the country's reputation for promoting Internet freedom. "It is a disappointment that he is facing limited options," WikiLeaks Icelandic spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson told Reuters. "I am not optimistic that the new conservative government will take steps of courage and boldness to assist Mr Snowden." The White House declined to comment Friday after the Presidents of Venezuela and Nicaragua announced they were prepared to grant NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden asylum. Although there were no concrete details from Presidents Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua or Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, it is believed that they are the first offers of asylum that Snowden has received since he requested asylum in several countries, including Nicaragua and Venezuela. "As head of state, the government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela decided to offer humanitarian asylum to the young American Edward Snowden so that he can live (without) ... persecution from the empire," President Maduro said, referring to the United States. He made the offer during a speech marking the anniversary of Venezuela's independence. It was not immediately clear if there were any conditions to Venezuela's offer. In Nicaragua, Ortega said he was willing to make the same offer "if circumstances allow it." Ortega didn't say what the right circumstances would be when he spoke during a speech in Managua. He said the Nicaraguan embassy in Moscow received Snowden's application for asylum and that it is studying the request. "We have the sovereign right to help a person who felt remorse after finding out how the United States was using technology to spy on the whole world, and especially its European allies," Ortega said. The White House on Friday refused to comment on the asylum offers, referring questions on the matter to the U.S. Justice Department, according to Reuters. The offers came a day after left-wing South American leaders gathered to denounce the rerouting of Bolivian President Evo Morales' plane in Europe earlier this week amid reports that Snowden might have been aboard. Spain on Friday said it had been warned along with other European countries that Snowden, a former U.S. intelligence worker, was aboard the Bolivian presidential plane, an acknowledgement that the manhunt for the fugitive leaker had something to do with the plane's unexpected diversion to Austria. It is unclear whether the United States, which has told its European allies that it wants Snowden back, warned Madrid about the Bolivian president's plane. U.S. officials will not detail their conversations with European countries, except to say that they have stated the U.S.'s general position that it wants Snowden back. President Barack Obama has publicly displayed a relaxed attitude toward Snowden's movements, saying last month that he wouldn't be "scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker." But the drama surrounding the flight of Bolivian President Evo Morales, whose plane was abruptly rerouted to Vienna after apparently being denied permission to fly over France, suggests that pressure is being applied behind the scenes. Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo told Spanish National Television that "they told us that the information was clear, that he was inside." He did not identify who "they" were and declined to say whether he had been in contact with the U.S. But he said that European countries' decisions were based on the tip. France has since sent a letter of apology to the Bolivian government. Meanwhile, secret-spilling website WikiLeaks said that Snowden, who is still believed to be stuck in a Moscow airport's transit area, had put in asylum applications to six new countries. The organization said in a message posted to Twitter on Friday that it wouldn't be identifying the countries involved "due to attempted U.S. interference." They also called for “all strong countries” in the Union of South American Nations to offer Snowden asylym. A number of countries have already rejected asylum applications from Snowden.