Russian TV says Julian Assange to resume broadcasts

MOSCOW: Julian Assange will resume his broadcasts on Russian television once his legal troubles are over, a Russian television journalist said yesterday after meeting the WikiLeaks founder in the Ecuadoran embassy in London where he has taken refuge.
“I spent an hour with him and we concluded that when all that is over, and I hope it ends soon, we will certainly resume cooperation with Assange,” the editor in chief of RT (Russia Today), Margarita Simonian, told the daily Moskovskii Komsomolets.
Simonian said she recently visited the Ecuadoran embassy in London to speak with Assange, whom she found “fit and well, jovial, at ease.”
RT, the public television channel broadcast in English, Arabic and Spanish around the world, has already broadcast 12 programs presented live by Assange who interviewed leading personalities.
The latest program was broadcast in May, before Britain's supreme court gave its green light for Assange to be extradited to Sweden where prosecutors want to question him over rape and sexual assault allegations from two women.
The Australian has since taken up refuge in the Ecuadoran embassy.
Quito granted Assange political asylum on Aug. 16, but London has refused to let him leave Britain a free man.
Meanwhile, The Organization of American States declared “solidarity and support” Friday for Ecuador in its dispute with Britain over granting asylum to Assange.
The meeting of the Americas bloc was convened at Ecuador's request to consider a resolution rejecting any attempt to put at risk the “inviolability” of its embassy in London, where Assange is holed up.
In the resolution, foreign ministers and representatives of the 34-member regional body rejected “any attempt that might put at risk the inviolability of the premises of diplomatic missions.”
The text, adopted by consensus after five hours of arduous negotiations in Washington, also expressed “solidarity and support for the government of the Republic of Ecuador.”
It urged Ecuador and Britain to “continue to engage in dialogue in order to settle their current differences in accordance with international law, taking into account the statements made recently by authorities of both governments.”
Reservations about the resolution were expressed in footnotes by the United States and Canada, OAS members who are also firm British allies.
n FROM: Agence France Presse