Assange: Obama exploiting uprisings
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has accused US president Barack Obama of seeking to exploit the Arab uprisings for personal and political gain as he addressed a fringe meeting of the United Nations General Assembly via videolink from his embassy hideout.
The Australian activist has sheltered inside Ecuador's embassy in London - beyond the reach of British police - since June 19, when he sought refuge after he exhausted all legal routes to avoid extradition to Sweden for questioning over sex crimes claims.
Mr Assange and his supporters claim the Swedish sex case is part of a Washington-orchestrated plot to make him stand trial in the United States over his work with WikiLeaks, which has published thousands of secret US diplomatic cables and other documents. Both Sweden and the US deny that.
At the fringe meeting organised by Ecuador, the activist attempted to draw parallels between himself and the instigators of the Arab Spring - claiming that they had all been let down by Mr Obama.
"It must come as a surprise to Tunisians for Barack Obama to say the US supported the forces of change in Tunisia," Mr Assange said from Ecuador's tiny flat-sized London mission. He claimed that uprisings across the Arab world had been inspired, in part, by his organisation's disclosures about despotic rulers, including Tunisia's deposed president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
Mr Assange claimed that Mr Obama - whose administration he accuses of building a criminal case against WikiLeaks and of harassing its staff - was seeking to exploit the reforms of the Arab Spring during his re-election campaign.
"Mohamed Bouazizi did not set himself on fire so that Barack Obama could get re-elected," Mr Assange told the meeting, referring to the 2011 self-immolation by a Tunisian fruit vendor which sparked the uprising that toppled Ben Ali.
Mr Assange, who made no reference to the Swedish sexual misconduct case as he addressed diplomats, also accused Britain and Sweden of failing to provide guarantees that he would not face extradition to the US to help preserve close military and intelligence links with Washington.
Ecuador's president Rafael Correa has granted Mr Assange asylum, but if he steps outside the country's London embassy he will be arrested by police who surround the building. The case has left Britain, Ecuador and Sweden at a diplomatic impasse. Foreign ministers from Quito and London will meet in New York later as Assange marks 100 days holed up in the embassy.
Ecuador's foreign minister Ricardo Patino told the meeting he believed there were "many ways to achieve a solution" without specifying potential routes. Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Tuesday that he saw "no sign of any breakthrough" in the saga.
