Re: i cant beleive
The right of Sancturary in embassies seems to be pretty much generally recognised in South America. It's not in the Vienna Conventions, which everybody is signed up to, but I believe a few other countries also go along with it. We don't. UK embassy practise is apparently to try and shuffle people out the door again as fast as you can, before there's an international incident. Embassies are there to keep diplomatic relations between governments, and this sort of thing can seriously interfere with that important role.
However in South America there seems to be some tradition that if you get overthrown in a coup, you run out the back door of the Presidential Palace, and head straight for a friendly embassy. You then get besieged there for a few days/weeks, and when the new government is feeling confident they do a deal, and you get shipped off into exile.
Obviously it would be stupid to breach the Vienna Conventions by going in there, and putting all our embassies at increased risk of the same happening to them sometime.
There is an argument that Ecuador are also in breach of those conventions, but there's no world court to rule on this, so it all comes down to negotiation. I'd imagine their diplomats are sick of the situation, but they don't want to back down. The police cost doesn't come out of the Foreign Office's budget, so they can just sit there and ignore the problem. It would be a stupid precedent to set that we'll let people get away with it, just because they've run through an embassy's door, and so we all sit around until Ecuador or Assange get bored.
Although I do think we should cut off their Ferero Rocher rations...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
