Lavrov: Assange's right to refuge should be respected by UK
MOSCOW. Sept 1 (Interfax) - The United Kingdom's reported threats that its security forces can enter the Ecuadorean embassy in London to arrest WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has taken refuge there, are unlawful, says Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
"Sure, when someone threatens to storm an embassy, just as the Winter Palace was stormed [by Bolsheviks in St. Petersburg in 1917], I think it is somewhat outside the legal framework," Lavrov said in a lecture for students of Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) on Saturday.
"While he [Assange] is in Ecuadorean territory, I think no one will try to do injudicious things, and the right to refuge must be respected," he added.
The right to refuge can be contested only legally, he said.
Lavrov also called strange the charges on which Sweden is demanding Assange's extradition from the United Kingdom.
"He has been accused of very strange forms of rape," he said.
Both women alleging that Assange raped them were not coerced to be with him, Lavrov said.
Talking about WikiLeaks on the whole, the Russian minister said this information was not uninteresting but was not strategically important.
"It was quite interesting, at least at the beginning, to read what was made public due to WikiLeaks. This opened eyes on a lot of things," he said.
At the same time, he said he did not see anything that could have threatened any country's security among the WikiLeaks files.
"These materials shed some light on methods that countries use in their work and how they treat their partners. This was amusing, but no more than that," he said.
Russia presumed that the things were really such earlier, Lavrov said. "This was just confirmed," he said.
