“I think the solution should come from Sweden, with a way, a light, in order to prevent Assange for being extradited to the United States or make what Ecuador is proposing,” the diplomat said in an interview with Prensa Latina in this capital.

Assange is waiting for a London’s safe-passage to travel to Quito and take the political asylum given by Ecuador. However, the United Kingdom is insisting in his extradition to Stockholm for an investigation on alleged sexual crimes.

Salvador said that though the US government has not requested the extradition of the Australian journalist, “something dark, which is not clear,” is being planned, and it would represent a risk for Asssange if he is tried and sentenced in that country for releasing Washington’s secret cables.

The Ecuadorian representative to OAS considered difficult a way-out to the bilateral dispute by the judicial system, and said that Swedish authorities should accept the Ecuadorian proposal of interrogating Assange in London.

Salvador said that a United Kingdom-Ecuador dialogue is complex because they are two countries with different juridical systems.

The meeting was called on Friday, August 17, at a special meeting of the OAS Permanent Council with 23 votes for, including all South American countries, five abstentions, and three against: United States, Canada, and Trinidad and Tobago.

Discussion will focus on the situation between Ecuador and the United Kingdom concerning the inviolability of Ecuadorian diplomatic premises in London, under the international law.

Quito’s representative at the OAS, Maria Isabel Salvador, said that if the United States and Canada voted against, it means that they do not agree with the defense of the principle of the inviolability and that is serious for everyone, not only for the OAS, but also the whole world.

Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa seeks the continent’s support to the British executive’s threat of entering its embassy in London, where Assange took refuge on June 19 to avoid his extradition to Sweden, a country which claims him for alleged sex crimes.

Ecuador granted the founder of WikiLeaks political asylum on August 19, considering that he did not receive assurances from the UK and Sweden that will not be extradited to the United States, where Assange believes that his life is in danger.

“As established by the most elementary international practices of diplomacy and the principle of international law,” he added.

In statements to Prensa Latina, Rodriguez referred to the UK’s threat to raid Ecuador’s embassy in London to arrest the Australian citizen Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, and expressed Quito’s rejection of that threat.

The top leader of the integration bloc added that this situation, which poses a risk for a South American nation, further consolidates regional unity.

“It is happening, it is being demonstrated and it is being proved,” he said when alluding the UNASUR’s support for Ecuador, contained in the Guayaquil Declaration, approved last weekend in that city.

Rodriguez noted that if the UK is interested in maintaining good relations with the UNASUR and the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), it must acknowledge the practices on asylum implemented in the region in an unalterable and consecutive manner.

However, he suggested, before that, the UK must withdraw the document containing the threat and create the conditions that existed before, so that negotiation can flow in terms of mutual respects between sovereign countries.

The UNASUR would contribute to guaranteeing peace and finding a solution to this situation, he stated.

Rodriguez concluded that there are enough arguments and foundation for the UNASUR’s unanimous support for Ecuador.

The right to asylum, he noted, is a common tradition that must be accepted in other regions for peaceful coexistence in the world.

The ecuadorian minister made a press realease and said

that Ecuador will study the request because Assange is considered a politically persecuted person who needs protection.

Assange is requesting asylum based on Article 14.1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and

on Article 41 of the Ecuadorian Constitution, besides many other international treaties.

It was also known that Ecuador has officially informed the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the United Kingdom and its embassy in Quito on this subject.