Oliver Miles

Julian Assange has been given diplomatic asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. How did this peculiar situation arise and how will it end? I’m not concerned here with the rights and wrongs of the Assange story. In accordance with a court decision, the UK has a legal obligation to extradite him to Sweden, and is determined to fulfil that obligation, as the FCO has stated. There are many myths about diplomatic immunity: that ambassadors are allowed to break the law, or that the Ecuadorian Embassy in London is legally Ecuadorian territory. I am not an international lawyer or a protocol expert, but, like all diplomats, I have some practical experience of the way diplomatic immunity and privileges work.

The US defence secretary, Leon Panetta, told reporters in his plane as he flew to Brussels for a Nato meeting on 1 February that US troops in Afghanistan would step back from a fighting role by mid to late 2013, remaining there only in an ‘advise and assist’ and training capacity.

Only a few days earlier, on 28 January, David Cameron, welcoming President Karzai in London, had said:

Between now and 2014 there will be opportunities for different countries to reduce their numbers...

China's re-emergence as a world power, in some respects as a challenger to the American superpower, has been seen in the Middle East, as elsewhere, mainly in economic terms. China is expected to replace the US very soon as the largest importer of oil from Saudi Arabia, and the Middle East gets 75 per cent of its imports from Asia, expected to rise to 90 per cent by 2030. Iran is a special case, because of the dreadful state of relations with America and the West; China is Iran's largest trade partner, largest oil purchaser and largest foreign investor. Israel is also special; China buys modern technology, both civil (particularly agricultural) and military, including US technology under the counter. When foreign workers were evacuated from Libya in March this year, by far the largest number – up to 45,000 – were Chinese, involved in fifty large projects, worth $18 billion, in construction, railways, oil services and telecommunications. Economic interests have political and military consequences.

Militias of the Libyan Revolution have arrested Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and Abdullah Sanusi, Muammar Gaddafi’s two most prominent associates remaining at large.

The decisions about Libya that William Hague announced this week brought back memories. I was involved in the expulsion of the Libyan ambassador Musa Kusa and half his staff from London in 1980, and I was myself expelled from Libya in 1984 with my family, my staff and their families following our decision to break off diplomatic relations because of the murder of Yvonne Fletcher. I was a little shocked to hear that the diplomats remaining in the Libyan Embassy have been told to leave within three days. Diplomats are people too, and sorting out your children's schools, selling your car, packing or disposing of your other property and so on takes longer than that.