Wes­ley Gib­bings

?Caribbean coun­tries sand­wiched by a chal­leng­ing hemi­spher­ic di­vide be­tween the Unit­ed States and lead­ing Latin Amer­i­can states ap­peared to find con­ve­nient mid­dle ground when the 34-mem­ber Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS) reached agree­ment Fri­day on the Ecuador/ UK stand­off over Wik­ileaks founder, Ju­lian As­sange.

Armed with a de­c­la­ra­tion aris­ing out of last week's meet­ing of the "Po­lit­i­cal Coun­cil" of the Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent, the Hugo Chavez-in­spired Bo­li­var­i­an Al­liance for the Peo­ples of the Amer­i­c­as (AL­BA), there was an ex­pec­ta­tion that Caribbean mem­bers An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Do­mini­ca and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, to­geth­er with AL­BA-as­pi­rant St Lu­cia, would have toed a heavy, re­cal­ci­trant line.

The AL­BA de­c­la­ra­tion of Au­gust 18 point­ed­ly iden­ti­fies "the threat" made by the UK in­clud­ing "the pos­si­bil­i­ty of im­prop­er en­try in­to diplo­mat­ic premis­es of Ecuador in Lon­don in or­der to ar­rest Ju­lian As­sange." The Wik­ileaks pub­lish­er is cur­rent­ly holed up at the Ecuado­ri­an em­bassy in Lon­don en­joy­ing "diplo­mat­ic asy­lum" but no "free pas­sage" per­mit­ting him to leave the coun­try. He faces ex­tra­di­tion to Swe­den for ques­tion­ing re­lat­ed to rape and mo­lesta­tion al­le­ga­tions.

The AL­BA de­c­la­ra­tion said an Au­gust 15 diplo­mat­ic aide-mem­oire from the UK on the mat­ter at the height of the stand­off at Ecuador's Lon­don em­bassy con­sti­tut­ed "an act of in­tim­i­da­tion and a vi­o­la­tion of the ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty of the Re­pub­lic of Ecuador."

"You should be aware that there is a ba­sis in law in the UK (the Diplo­mat­ic and Con­sular Premis­es Act 1987) that would per­mit us to take steps to ar­rest Mr As­sange with­in the cur­rent premis­es of the em­bassy," the UK aide-mem­oire had as­sert­ed. "We sin­cere­ly hope that such a point is not reached, but if you can­not re­solve the pres­ence of Mr As­sange on your premis­es, that route is open to us."

A com­mu­niqu&ea­cute; is­sued by the UK in time for Fri­day's OAS min­is­te­r­i­al con­sul­ta­tions, how­ev­er, claimed that "at no time was any threat made against the Em­bassy of Ecuador." "The For­eign and Com­mon­wealth Of­fice em­pha­sis­es that the re­spect for, and com­pli­ance with, in­ter­na­tion­al law is at the heart of the con­duct of the for­eign pol­i­cy of the Unit­ed King­dom," the com­mu­niqu&ea­cute; says.

Fri­day's de­bate de­vot­ed some con­sid­er­able time to the stat­ed in­ten­tions of the UK gov­ern­ment fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment that "diplo­mat­ic asy­lum" had been grant­ed to the con­tro­ver­sial on­line pub­lish­er. The word "threat" had orig­i­nal­ly been a part of a draft res­o­lu­tion cir­cu­lat­ed to OAS mem­ber states by Ecuador and sev­er­al diplo­mats and for­eign min­is­ters made ref­er­ence to be­hind-the-scenes de­lib­er­a­tions on the doc­u­ment with par­tic­u­lar em­pha­sis on the com­bat­ive lan­guage.

The AL­BA de­c­la­ra­tion, which was an ap­par­ent ref­er­ence re­source for sev­er­al Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) states, had gone as far as say­ing: "We warn the Gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed King­dom and Great Britain about the grave con­se­quences that would be trig­gered through­out the world in the event of di­rect ag­gres­sion against the ter­ri­to­r­i­al im­mu­ni­ty of the Re­pub­lic of Ecuador in Lon­don."

The Union of South Amer­i­can Na­tions (UNA­SUR), of which Cari­com mem­bers Suri­name and Guyana are mem­bers, al­so on Au­gust 19 is­sued a sev­en-point de­c­la­ra­tion in which the group re­it­er­at­ed "the va­lid­i­ty of in­sti­tu­tions of asy­lum and refuge to pro­tect the hu­man rights of per­sons who con­sid­er that their lives or phys­i­cal in­tegri­ty are en­dan­gered."

The UK has, how­ev­er, con­tend­ed while it recog­nised that Ecuador is par­ty to the Cara­cas Con­ven­tion on Diplo­mat­ic Asy­lum of 1954 which per­mits sub­scrib­ing na­tions to grant diplo­mat­ic asy­lum in cer­tain cir­cum­stances, "the Unit­ed King­dom is not par­ty to that Con­ven­tion and there is no le­gal ba­sis for the Unit­ed King­dom to meet the re­quest of the Gov­ern­ment of Ecuador...to grant safe pas­sage for Mr As­sange out of the Unit­ed King­dom."

Against the back­drop of such ar­gu­ments, the OAS Per­ma­nent Coun­cil agreed Fri­day that the best course of ac­tion was to pro­mote more con­cil­ia­to­ry bi­lat­er­al dis­cus­sions be­tween Ecuador and the UK. It was a line pro­posed by Trinidad and To­ba­go ear­ly in the pro­ceed­ings. It had, how­ev­er, joined with the US and Cana­da in ini­tial­ly re­ject­ing a res­o­lu­tion to de­bate the is­sue sug­gest­ing the stand­off was a mat­ter for bi­lat­er­al ne­go­ti­a­tion.

The fi­nal ver­sion of the res­o­lu­tion adopt­ed by hemi­spher­ic gov­ern­ments, re­port­ed­ly with the ex­cep­tion of Cana­da, urges "the Gov­ern­ments of Ecuador and the Unit­ed King­dom of Great Britain and North­ern Ire­land to con­tin­ue to en­gage in di­a­logue in or­der to set­tle their cur­rent dif­fer­ences in ac­cor­dance with in­ter­na­tion­al law, tak­ing in­to ac­count the state­ments made re­cent­ly by au­thor­i­ties of both gov­ern­ments." It ex­press­es sol­i­dar­i­ty with Ecuador but drops the sharp tone of the AL­BA and UNA­SUR de­c­la­ra­tions en­dorsed by a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of OAS states, in­clud­ing sev­er­al Cari­com mem­ber coun­tries, on­ly days be­fore.