Islam Times - ‘UK’s threat to Ecuador, a big mistake’

Islam Times - Former British ambassador to Libya has said that Britain’s threat to storm the Ecuadorian embassy in London and arrest WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange “was a big mistake”.

“It puts the British government in the position of asking for something illegitimate”, said former British ambassador Oliver Miles.

While under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, diplomatic posts are treated as the territory of the foreign nation, on Thursday 16 August, Britain referred to a little known UK law and warned Ecuador that it could storm the South American country’s embassy in London.

“You should be aware that there is a legal basis in the UK - the Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act - which would allow us to take action to arrest Mr Assange in the current premises of the embassy”, read the British government’s letter to Ecuadorian officials.

The law was passed in the UK in 1984 following the death of a British police officer, Yvonne Joyce Fletcher, in London after shots were fired from the first floor of the Libyan embassy during a protest staged by opponents to former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

However, experts and ex-diplomats have said the Foreign Office’s threat to Ecuador “was a big mistake” as it angered Ecuadorian officials.

Following reports that British Prime Minister David Cameron, who is on holiday in Spain, contacted the Foreign Office expressing concerns over the diplomatic blunder, the Foreign Office insisted that its letter was “not a threat”.

Nevertheless, Miles, who broke off diplomatic relations with Libya following Fletcher’s death, dismissed the remarks with a laugh saying “If I tell you, ‘I'm not threatening you but I DO have a very large stick here,’ it’s a question of semantics”.