[governance] Tangential (On Exceptionalism Wikileaks) America's vassal acts decisively and illegally

[Riaz K Tayob]

*America's vassal acts decisively and illegally*

Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was 
British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and 
Rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010.

http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2012/08/americas-vassal-acts-decisively-and-illegally/ 


I returned to the UK today to be astonished by private confirmation from 
within the FCO that the UK government has indeed decided -- after 
immense pressure from the Obama administration -- to enter the 
Ecuadorean Embassy and seize Julian Assange.

This will be, beyond any argument, a blatant breach of the Vienna 
Convention of 1961, to which the UK is one of the original parties and 
which encodes the centuries -- arguably millennia -- of practice which 
have enabled diplomatic relations to function. The Vienna Convention is 
the most subscribed single international treaty in the world.

The provisions of the Vienna Convention on the status of diplomatic 
premises are expressed in deliberately absolute terms. There is no 
modification or qualification elsewhere in the treaty.

Article 22

1.The premises of the mission shall be inviolable. The agents of the 
receiving State may not enter them, except with the consent of the head 
of the mission.
2.The receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate 
steps to protect the premises of the mission against any intrusion or 
damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the mission or 
impairment of its dignity.
3.The premises of the mission, their furnishings and other property 
thereon and the means of transport of the mission shall be immune from 
search, requisition, attachment or execution.

Not even the Chinese government tried to enter the US Embassy to arrest 
the Chinese dissident Chen Guangchen. Even during the decades of the 
Cold War, defectors or dissidents were never seized from each other's 
embassies. Murder in Samarkand relates in detail my attempts in the 
British Embassy to help Uzbek dissidents. This terrible breach of 
international law will result in British Embassies being subject to 
raids and harassment worldwide.

The government's calculation is that, unlike Ecuador, Britain is a 
strong enough power to deter such intrusions. This is yet another 
symptom of the "might is right" principle in international relations, in 
the era of the neo-conservative abandonment of the idea of the rule of 
international law.

The British Government bases its argument on domestic British 
legislation. But the domestic legislation of a country cannot counter 
its obligations in international law, unless it chooses to withdraw from 
them. If the government does not wish to follow the obligations imposed 
on it by the Vienna Convention, it has the right to resile from it -- 
which would leave British diplomats with no protection worldwide.

I hope to have more information soon on the threats used by the US 
administration. William Hague had been supporting the move against the 
concerted advice of his own officials; Ken Clarke has been opposing the 
move against the advice of his. I gather the decision to act has been 
taken in Number 10.

There appears to have been no input of any kind from the Liberal 
Democrats. That opens a wider question -- there appears to be no 
"liberal" impact now in any question of coalition policy. It is amazing 
how government salaries and privileges and ministerial limousines are 
worth far more than any belief to these people. I cannot now conceive 
how I was a member of that party for over thirty years, deluded into a 
genuine belief that they had principles.

***

Published on The Nation (http://www.thenation.com)

The Geopolitics of Asylum

Tom Hayden | August 16, 2012

The British a "huge mistake" in threatening to extract Julian Assange 
from Ecuador's London embassy after the Latin American country granted 
political asylum to the WikiLeaks foundaer yesterday, says international 
human rights lawyer Michael Ratner. "They overstepped, looked like 
bullies, and made it into a big-power versus small-power conflict," said 
Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, in an 
interview with The Nation today. Ratner is a consultant to Assange's 
legal team and recently spent a week in Ecuador for discussions of the case.

The diplomatic standoff will have to be settled through negotiations or 
by the International Court of Justice at The Hague, Ratner said. "In my 
memory, no state has ever invaded another country's embassy to seize 
someone who has been granted asylum," he said, adding that there would 
be no logic in returning an individual to a power seeking to charge him 
for political reasons.

Since Assange entered the Ecuadorian embassy seven weeks ago, Ecuadorian 
diplomats have sought the assurance through private talks with the 
British and Swedes that Assange will be protected from extradition to 
the United States, where he could face charges under the US Espionage 
Act. Such guarantees were refused, according to Ecuador's foreign 
minister, Ricardo Patiño, who said in Quito that the British made an 
"explicit threat" to "assault our embassy" to take Assange. "We are not 
a British colony," Patiño added.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said yesterday that his 
government will not permit safe passage for Assange, setting the stage 
for what may be a prolonged showdown.

The United States has been silent on whether it plans to indict Assange 
and ultimately seek his extradition. Important lawmakers, like Senator 
Diane Feinstein, a chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, have 
called for Assange's indictment in recent weeks. But faced with strong 
objections from civil liberties and human rights advocates, the White 
House may prefer to avoid direct confrontation, leaving Assange 
entangled in disputes with the UK and Sweden over embarrassing charges 
of sexual misconduct in Sweden.

Any policy of isolating Assange may have failed now, as the conflict 
becomes one in which Ecuador---and a newly independent Latin 
America---stand off against the US and UK. Ecuador's president Rafael 
Correa represents the wave of new nationalist leaders on the continent 
who have challenged the traditional US dominance over trade, security 
and regional decision-making. Correa joined the Venezuelan-founded 
Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas in June 2009, and closed the US 
military base in Ecuador in September 2009. His government fined Chevron 
for $8.6 billion for damages to the Amazon rainforest, in a case which 
Correa called "the most important in the history of the country." He 
survived a coup attempt in 2010.

It is very unlikely that Correa would make his asylum decision without 
consulting other governments in Latin America. An aggressive reaction by 
the British, carrying echoes of the colonial past, is likely to solidify 
Latin American ranks behind Quito, making Assange another irritant in 
relations with the United States.

Earlier this year, many Central and Latin American leaders rebuked the 
Obama administration for its drug war policies and vowed not to 
participate in another Organization of American States meeting that 
excluded Cuba. Shortly after, President Obama acted to remove his Latin 
American policy chief, Dan Restrepo, according to a source with close 
ties to the Obama administration. Now the Assange affair threatens more 
turmoil between the United States and the region.

***

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2012/08/196589.htm


Victoria Nuland

Spokesperson

Daily Press Briefing

Washington, DC

August 16, 2012

*TRANSCRIPT:*

*12:44 p.m. EDT*

*MS. NULAND:*Happy Thursday, everybody. Let's start with whatever's on 
your minds.

*Q*: Do you have any thoughts at all on the decision by Ecuador to grant 
diplomatic asylum to Mr. Assange?

*MS. NULAND:*This is an issue between the Ecuadorans, the Brits, the 
Swedes. I don't have anything particular to add.

*Q*: You don't have any interest at all in this case other than as of a 
completely neutral, independent observer of it?

*MS. NULAND:*Well, certainly with regard to this particular issue, it is 
an issue among the countries involved and we're not planning to 
interject ourselves.

*Q*: Have you not interjected yourself at all?

*MS. NULAND:*Not with regard to the issue of his current location or 
where he may end up going, no.

*Q*: Well, there has been some suggestion that the U.S. is pushing the 
Brits to go into the Ecuadorian embassy and remove him.

*MS. NULAND:*I have no information to indicate that there is any truth 
to that at all.

*Q*: Do -- and the Brits -- Former Secretary Hague said that the Brits 
do not recognize diplomatic asylum. I'm wondering if the United States 
recognizes diplomatic asylum, given that it is a signatory to this 1954 
OAS treaty which grants -- or which recognizes diplomatic asylum, but 
only, presumably, within the membership of the OAS. But more broadly, 
does the U.S. recognize diplomatic asylum as a legal thing under 
international law?

*MS. NULAND:*Well, if you're asking for -- me for a global legal answer 
to the question, I'll have to take it and consult 4,000 lawyers.

*Q*: Contrasting it with political asylum. This is different, diplomatic 
asylum.

*MS. NULAND:*With regard to the decision that the Brits are making or 
the statement that they made, our understanding was that they were 
leaning on British law in the assertions that they made with regard to 
future plans, not on international law. But if you're asking me to check 
what our legal position is on this term of art, I'll have to take it, 
Matt, and get back to you.

*Q*: Yeah, just whether you do recognize it outside of the confines of 
the -- of the OAS and those signatories.

And then when you said that you don't have any information to suggest 
that you have weighed in with the Brits about whether to have Mr. 
Assange removed from the embassy, does that mean that there hasn't been 
any, or just that you're not aware of it?

*MS. NULAND:*My information is that we have not involved ourselves in 
this. If that is not correct, we'll get back to you.

[...]


*Q*: All right. And then just back to the Assange thing, the reason that 
the Ecuadorians gave -- have given him asylum is because they say that 
-- they agree with his claim that he would be -- could face persecution 
-- government persecution if for any reason he was to come to the United 
States under whatever circumstances. Do you -- do you find that that's a 
credible argument? Does anyone face unwarranted or illegal government 
persecution in the United States?

*MS. NULAND:*No.

*Q*: No?

*MS. NULAND:*No.

*Q*: And so you think that the grounds that -- in this specific case, 
the grounds for him receiving asylum from any country -- or any country 
guaranteeing asylum to anyone on the basis that if they happen to show 
up in the United States they might be subject to government persecution, 
you don't view that as --

*MS. NULAND:*I'm not -- I'm not going to comment on the Ecuadoran 
thought process here. If you're asking me whether there was any 
intention to persecute rather than prosecute, the answer is no.

*Q*: OK.

*MS. NULAND:*OK?

*Q*: Well -- wait, hold on a second -- so you're saying that he would 
face prosecution?

*MS. NULAND:*Again, I'm not -- we were in a situation where he was not 
headed to the United States. He was headed elsewhere. So I'm not going 
to get into all of the legal ins and outs about what may or may not have 
been in his future before he chose to take refuge in the Ecuadoran mission.

But with regard to the charge that the U.S. was intent on persecuting 
him, I reject that completely.

*Q*: OK, fair enough. But I mean, unfortunately, this is -- this case 
does rest entirely on legal niceties. Pretty much all of it is on the 
legal niceties, maybe not entirely. So are you -- when you said that the 
intention was to prosecute, not persecute, are you saying that he does 
face prosecution in the United States?

*MS. NULAND:*Again, I don't -- that was not the course of action that we 
were all on. But let me get back to you on -- there was -- I don't think 
that when he decided to take refuge, that was where he was headed, 
right? Obviously, we have --

*Q*: No, I mean, he was headed to Sweden.

*MS. NULAND:*Right, but obviously, we have our own legal case. I'm going 
to send you Justice on what the exact status of that was, OK?

*Q*: OK, there is -- so you're saying that there is a legal case against 
him.

*MS. NULAND:*I'm saying that the Justice Department was very much 
involved with broken U.S. law, et cetera. But I don't have any specifics 
here on what their intention would have been vis-a-vis him. So I'm not 
going to wade into it any deeper than I already have, which was too far, 
all right?

*Q*: (Chuckles.) OK, well, wait, wait, I just have one more, and it 
doesn't involve the -- it involves the whole inviability (sic) of 
embassies and that kind of thing.

*MS. NULAND:*Right.

*Q*: You said that -- at the beginning that you have not involved 
yourselves at all. But surely if there -- if you were aware that a 
country was going to raid or enter a diplomatic compound of any country, 
of any other country, you would find that to be unacceptable, correct?

*MS. NULAND:*As I said --

*Q*: I mean, if the Chinese had gone in after -- into the embassy in 
Beijing to pull out the -- your -- the blind lawyer, you would have 
objected to that, correct?

*MS. NULAND:*As I said at the beginning, the -- our British allies have 
cited British law with regard to the statements they've made about 
potential future action. I'm not in a position here to evaluate British 
law, international -- as compared to international law.

So I can't -- if you're asking me to wade into the question of whether 
they have the right to do what they're proposing to do or may do under 
British law, I'm going to send you to them.

*Q*: Right, but there's -- but it goes beyond British law. I mean, there 
is international law here too, and presumably the United State would 
oppose or would condemn or at least express concerns about any 
government entering or violating the sovereignty of a diplomatic 
compound anywhere in the world, no?

*MS. NULAND:*Again, I can't speak to what it is that they are standing 
on vis-a-vis Vienna Convention or anything else. I also can't speak to 
what the status of the particular building that he happens to be in at 
the moment is. So I'm going to send you to the Brits on all of that. You 
know where we are on the Vienna Convention in general, and that is 
unchanged. OK?

*Q*: OK. Well, when the Iranians stormed the embassy in Teheran, back in 
1979, presumably you thought that was a bad thing, right?

*MS. NULAND:*That was a Vienna-Convention-covered facility and a 
Vienna-Convention-covered moment. I cannot speak to any of the rest of 
this on British soil. I'm going to send you to Brits. OK?

*Q*: A very quick follow-up. You said there is a case against him by the 
Justice Department. Does that include --

*MS. NULAND:*I did not say that. I said that the Justice Department is 
working on the entire WikiLeaks issue. So I can't -- I can't speak to 
what Justice may or may not have. I'm going to send you to Justice.

*Q*: Is there a U.S. case against him?

*MS. NULAND:*I'm going to send you to Justice, because I really don't 
have the details. OK? Thanks, guys.

(The briefing was concluded at 1:19 p.m.)

*DPB #146*





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