GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador - Ecuador's President Rafael Correa on Saturday rejected
"rude threats" from the UK towards his country,
referring to the possibility of the
British police to enter the Ecuadorian embassy in London to stop the refugee Julian
Assange, and branded
them as "extremely serious"
for the world.
“What has happened is
extremely serious not only for Ecuador but (…) for the entire planet”, declared
the president before the foreign
ministers of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) who met in Guayaquil (southeast of Ecuador) on request of Quito in
order to investigate the crisis with London concerning the decision of giving
diplomatic asylum to the founder of wikiLeaks.
“We will not give up the
effort nor the discussions in order to achieve the unanimous
rejection and conviction of this unprecedented threat and
possibility, because I insist, the United Kingdom has
not retracted this threat and could enter our embassy, today, tomorrow”, he
added.
Explaining
the situation to the ALBA’s foreign ministers, Correa said: “Imagine the
precedent, not only for our country but for them. Anyone could
enter as well a British embassy anywhere in the world”.
The ALBA is
a subregional alliance of countries formed at the request of the Venezuelan
president Hugo Chávez and its fellow members are Cuba, Bolivia,
Nicaragua, Dominica, Ecuador, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Antigua and
Barbuda.
Earlier, during his weekly work
report presented in the city of Loja (south), the Head of State declared:
“Never, at least as long as I’m president, this Ecuador will accept threats
like those that have been presented in a completely rude, inconsiderate and
intolerable way by Great Britain”.
Ecuador denounced the
document it received from the British government in which they warned they
could enter the premises of the Ecuadorian embassy in London to arrest Assange,
who is wanted for extradition by Sweden for sexual assault charges that he
denies having committed.
Correa insisted this
Saturday, August 18, in the denunciation, although the British minister of
International Relations, William Hague, rejected this version.
“There is no threat here to storm an embassy. We are talking about an
Act of Parliament in this country which stresses that it must be used in full
conformity with international law,” said Hague.
Assange fears that Sweden could subsequently extradite him to the
United States, where he would be investigated for espionage due to the
publication of hundreds of thousands of secret documents from the State
Department, for which he states that he could be given death penalty.
The past 19th of
June, the Australian has taken refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in
London and August 16 Ecuador granted him the diplomatic asylum.
Correa said that with “surprise” he received the written statement from
London in which a direct quote is made that “according to a national law from
1987 (..) they could enter our embassy“.
“Did they believe they could intimidate or daunt us with that? They
don’t know who they are dealing with!”, he exclaimed.
In this situation, Ecuador solicited support from the regional bodies
like the ALBA, Unasur and OEA.
The foreign ministers of Unasur will also hold a meeting, today Sunday
in Guayaquil, while the OEA will meet on august 24 in
Washington.
The president of Ecuador recalled this Saturday that before granting
asylum to Assange, his country exhausted “all the instances for a diplomatic
solution” on the case.
