Ecuadoran President Lenin Moreno on Sunday described WikiLeaks frontman Julian Assange as an “inherited problem” that has created “more than a nuisance” for his government.
“We hope to have a positive result” on the issue, he said in an interview with television networks.
Earlier this month, Ecuador announced that it had granted citizenship to Assange in an unsuccessful attempt to provide him with diplomatic immunity and usher him out of its London embassy without the threat of arrest by Britain.
Photo: Reuters
Moreno said his country was continuing to seek mediation involving “important people,” without specifying whom he meant.
Assange fled to the embassy in 2012 to avoid being extradited to Sweden for alleged sex crimes, which he denies, and has remained in the building ever since.
Sweden later shelved its investigation, but Assange faces arrest by British authorities for fleeing justice in the Swedish case.
He fears that British authorities will then allow his extradition to the US, where he is wanted for publication by WikiLeaks of classified information in 2010.
Assange has strained the patience of his hosts since taking up the offer of asylum made by then-Ecuadoran president Rafael Correa in 2012.
He was reprimanded for interfering in the 2016 US election after publishing hacked e-mails from the campaign team of then-Democrat candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.
More recently, he drew the ire of Moreno when he used Twitter to pump out messages of support for Catalonia’s independence drive.
Moreno was forced to respond to complaints from Madrid.
Commenting on the move to designate Assange a diplomat, Moreno said: “This would have been a good result, unfortunately, things did not turn out as the foreign ministry planned and so the problem still exists.”
Ecuadoran Minister of Foreign Affairs Maria Fernanda Espinosa has confirmed that Ecuador will maintain the asylum granted to Assange by the government of former president Correa.
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