Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy for the past one year, on Wednesday vowed to remain there even if accusations of sex crimes against him are dropped in Sweden.
“My lawyers have advised me I should not leave the embassy because of the risk of arrest and extradition to the US,” Assange told reporters at the embassy.
“The strong view of my US lawyer is...I would be arrested, unless the British Government gave information or guarantees that would grant me safe passage. We know there is an ongoing investigation in the US and we know I am a target of the federal grand jury,” he said.
“There is a 99.97 per cent chance that I will be indicted. So if the Swedish Government drops their request tomorrow, I still cannot leave the embassy,” he added. Assange, 41, had sought asylum in the embassy a year ago after he lost an appeal against extradition to Sweden for questioning over alleged sex offences he has always denied. The Australian national now says he still fears being sent to the US for releasing thousands of secret diplomatic documents including 250,000 State Department cables. US Army soldier Bradley Manning has admitted passing those documents to Wikileaks.
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“Recent developments showed that there are foreign hands behind the opening of the Taliban office in Qatar. Unless the peace process is led by Afghans, the High Peace Council will not participate in the Qatar negotiations,” the statement said, referring to the organization he set up in 2010 during earlier peace efforts.
US President Barack Obama, currently visiting Europe, defended Washington’s push for a political reconciliation alongside the withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan, save for an ongoing training and advising presence
after 2014.
“We still believe that you’ve got to have a parallel track to at least look at the prospect of some sort of political reconciliation,” Obama told a news conference in Berlin, adding: “Whether that bears fruit, whether it actually happens, or whether, post-2014, there’s going to continue to be fighting, as there was before ISAF forces got into Afghanistan, that’s a question that only the Afghans can answer.”
Stating that Karzai himself recognizes the need for political reconciliation, Obama said: “The challenge is how do you get those things started while you’re also at war. And my hope is, and expectation is, is that despite those challenges, the process will proceed.”
He spoke of extensive conversations held with President Karzai both before and after the Taliban opened the office in Doha on Tuesday.
“As I think has been reported, there were some concerns about the manner in which the Taliban opened it, some of the language that they used,” Obama said.
Some areas of friction were anticipated at the outset, he said, adding: “That’s not surprising. As I said, they’ve been fighting for a very long time. There’s enormous mistrust. Not only have the Taliban and the Afghan government been fighting for a long time, they’re fighting as we speak.
“We’re in the middle of a war. And Afghans are still being killed and, by the way, members of the international forces there are still being killed.”
His apparent reference was to the death of four US soldiers who were killed in a Taliban attack at an Afghan air base, putting yet another question mark on the proposed talks.
A Taliban spokesman had claimed credit for launching the rocket attacks on Bagram airbase, the largest military base for US troops in Afghanistan.