as an official statement.

I can tell you whom I would generally believe in that case.

That's the only reason I can think of.

While the apology was later and made officially.

I'm not seeing any actual admission there, now that I read it more closely.

A considerable amount of paraphrasing, I can't determine what the actual words of the Ffm were.

That one is easy. By the time the apology is made, they are not putting anything in the way of Morales flying over France, and they don't have any intention of doing so.

The apology came later. We know that. The earlier story said:

Not "always had". Not "had had", which might imply that at all relevant times he had authorization. This fits with Hollande pointing out that, Hollande himself knew Morales was on the plane, Hollande told them to allow it. Since presidents don't normally get involved with air traffic control decisions, this clearly means someone else had decided to block the flight. So, after Hollande overruled them, the officials could then be reported the next day as saying the plane had authorization.

To answer your OP question, no, of course you're not the first to read them both. But it's easy to see how the officials' words need to be read closely, and with what Hollande later said, and the apology, we can see they wanted to give the impression there was no problem, without directly lying.

Sounds like a lot of back-pedalling.

Option 1: "Shit. We said we didn't deny them clearance, but we did. Go apologize."

Option 2: "Shit. People are going to keep freaking out unless we apologize. Go apologize even though we stick by our denial."

(The actual apology is pretty weasley in the sense of not actually admitting to blocking the plane.)

Puzzling to a golden retriever perhaps.

Not puzzling at all to a human being of at least normal intelligence that has had the chance to observe the behaviors of his fellow two legged animals for three times seven years or more.

I don't know the truth of the thing, but you ar juxtaposing an official statement from the French Foreign Minister actually speaking for France and what two anonymous people in the French government said to an AP reporter.

Perhaps the two anonymous sources are right, but they obviously are not speaking for France. (France is not very anonymous. Even I know her name)

So the paradox posed in the OP is a fallacy.

France did not make both statements.

... of President Morales, who is still welcome in our country," the Foreign Ministry said in an official statement sent by email.

And that's the apology.

Parsing a diplomatic statement to reverse engineer facts is a dubious process.

Why not ask why Bolivia made the complaint? That question offers the same puzzles, really.

I, myself, do not know what went on. It seems plain, however, that *something* happened that led Bolivia to believe that the airspace in question was denied them at the time.

Getting into the fine points of closed airspace versus not approving a flight plane versus denying refueling rights versus versus a delay on processing something that is (in practical effect) tantamount to a temporary denial of airspace...

Something happened.

And the "broken fuel gauge" thing is absurd, and gets worse the more one looks at it.

And no, a plane carrying a head of state will probably not announce diplomatically explosive reasons for an unscheduled stop on open air. The reliance on air traffic chatter is serious straw-grasping.

It is entirely possible that Bolivia made it all up, or misunderstood something. Or that France did. Or a lot of things.

But what is being posited by some is that a plane developed a mechanical malfunction forcing it to land in Austria, and that then Bolivia complained about French and Spanish airspace being denied them out of the blue, and baselessly as a way to make trouble. And then some nations had a confused idea as how to respond, despite there being nothing confusing since NOTHING had happened other than a Bolivian flight having a mechanical problem. That IS what is being alleged by some, though I don't think they have thought it through, or even care to think it through.

***Something*** happened. We do not know what, but we know it was not an unexceptional incident about a broken fuel gauge.

Which leaves open that their intention was to block a plane they thought might have Snowden on it. That this had the side effect of blocking Morales may have been regrettable, but they're not saying it didn't happen. The official apology calls it a "delay in granting the president’s plane permission to fly over French territory". In other words, the normal process for a friendly plane, where the pilot says to ATC "can we have a route through your airspace, please" and ATC gives one, was stopped. They denied the request. The French president had to give the authorisation, and that is extraordinary. He would not be in an ATC room.

as a source and the other furnishes the Minister's name.

I think that sometimes in order to be the first with a story, a reporter won't get a name to confirm or deny. Or even call another source.

The last batch got called out, so now they're coming up with new spin!

Throw it at the wall, see what sticks!

...Hollande, the President of France, has already acknowledged that it was he himself who eventually gave the order PERMITTING overflight by Morales' plane. This of course means that the overflight had NOT been permitted before he, Hollande, intervened.

It's not hard to sort out the truth here.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/07/03/evo-morales-controversial-flight-over-europe-minute-by-heavily-disputed-minute/

I call your attention to that last bit in bold. That is a statement from France's President Hollande. Apparently for some reason, he was personally involved in deciding whether or not a plane carrying a head of state could fly over France's air space. And, according to HIS OWN STATEMENT, he "immediately gave my authorization". But you know what that means? THAT MEANS THE FLIGHT WAS NOT AUTHORIZED UNTIL HOLLANDE AUTHORIZED IT. So there's your proof that France, at least, was lying about the matter when they denied involvement.

...hmmm. Let's say I'm up in the air on my way for a several-thousand-mile trip. But then something strange happens: the first few countries I need to fly over, suddenly rescind permission to fly over.

What to do, what to do.

I suppose I could just keep flying around in circles. Or, I could look for a place that will allow me to land, before I get in a situation where I and my passengers are endangered.

So I change course and radio Vienna. But it's awkward: maybe they, too, will deny overflight? So I do have concerns about fuel, even though they are not yet urgent. I have even more concerns that if I tell them other European countries have denied me permission to fly over, then Austria might decide to follow suit. So I just claim problems with the fuel gauge in order to make the situation sound more neutral than it is.

I'm not saying that's why the pilot said what he said, just saying I can see that as a plausible reason for doing so.

I'm not exactly taking their word at face value here.

...there is plenty of evidence as to what happened. Starting with the French President, who for some reason was personally involved in a decision about whether to allow Morales' plane to fly over France, as had been planned in advance (you don't really think heads of state go flying around without flight plans, do you?).

One can reasonably question whether the US orchestrated the whole thing, or just routinely asked for assistance from other countries, and then let them decide on their own what to do. One cannot reasonably claim that nothing unusual happened, that Morales' plane just landed for purely mechanical reasons. If that were the case, then why did the plane make a hairpin turn and backtrack? If it was a simple mechanical problem and there were no overflight restrictions, then they could have requested to land anywhere. But that is not how the whole thing went down.

Well anyway. We can argue until we're blue in the face (and some of us are, myself included). It will be more significant to see what the Latin American countries make of the whole debacle.

There have been some statements from Spain and Portugal. We cannot tell who has told the fuller story with what they've said. We can see that, bizarrely, Portugal claimed 'technical reasons' for why they refused to refuel a jet - as if they are a third world country to which a normal jet is a new form of technology they cannot cope with. That itself means you should not just take the impression that Portugal wishes people to take from its statement at face value.

Diplomats and politicians are funny that way.

This is a mess.

And not and honest broker.