Newspaper Page Text
10A Friday, December 7, 2018
The Times, Gainesville, Georgia | gainesvilletimes.com
WORLD
Ecuador: Assange safe enough to leave embassy
BY GONZALO SOLANO
AND JOSHUA GOODMAN
Associated Press
QUITO, Ecuador — Ecuador’s
president has ramped up pressure
on Julian Assange to leave his coun
try’s embassy in London, saying
that Britain had provided sufficient
guarantees that the WikiLeaks
founder won’t be extradited to face
the death penalty abroad.
Lenin Moreno’s comments in a
radio interview Thursday suggest
that months of quiet diplomacy
between the U.K. and Ecuador to
resolve Assange’s situation is bear
ing fruit at a time when questions
are swirling about the for
mer Australian hacker’s
legal fate in the U.S.
“The road is clear for
Mr. Assange to take the
decision to leave,” Moreno
said, referring to written
assurances he said he had
received from Britain.
Moreno didn’t say he
would force Assange out,
but said the activist’s legal team is
considering its next steps.
Assange has been holed up in the
Ecuadorian embassy since 2012,
when he was granted asylum while
facing allegations of sex
crimes in Sweden that he
said were a guise to extra
dite him to the U.S.
But his relations with his
hosts have soured to the
point that Moreno earlier
this year cut off his access
to the internet, purportedly
for violating the terms of
his asylum by speaking out
on political matters.
Assange in turn sued, saying
his rights as an Ecuadorian — he
was granted citizenship last year
as part of an apparent attempt to
name him a diplomat and ferry
him to Russia — were being
violated.
The mounting tensions has
drawn Moreno closer to the posi
tion of Britain, which for years has
said it is barred by law from extra
diting suspects to any jurisdiction
where they would face capital
punishment.
But nothing is preventing it from
extraditing him to the U.S. if pros
ecutors there were to pledge not to
seek the death penalty.
Assange has long maintained
the he faces charges under seal in
the U.S for revealing highly sensi
tive government information on
his website.
Those fears were heightened
when U.S prosecutors last month
mistakenly referenced criminal
charges against him in an unre
lated case.
The Associated Press and other
outlets have reported that Assange
is indeed facing unspecified
charges under seal, but prosecu
tors have so far provided no offi
cial confirmation.
Moreno
YUKI SATO I Associated Press
A U.S. Marine Corps’ KC-130 refueling plane, July, 2014,
in Ginowan city, Okinawa, southwestern Japan.
2 US warplanes
crash offjapan
BY MARI YAMAGUCHI
Associated Press
TOKYO — One of two
crew members recovered
after two U.S. warplanes
collided and crashed off
Japan’s coast Thursday
is dead and five others
remain missing, the U.S.
military said.
Both were in an F/A-18
Hornet fighter jet that col
lided with a KC-130 Her
cules refueling aircraft
collided during training at
about 2 a.m. after taking off
from their base in Iwakuni,
near Hiroshima. The five
others were in the KC-130.
The Marines said in a
statement that the two
planes were involved in
routine training, including
aerial refueling, but that it
was still investigating what
caused the crash.
President Donald Trump
tweeted that his thoughts
and prayers are with the
Marine Corps crew mem
bers involved in the colli
sion. He thanked the U.S.
Forces in Japan for their
“immediate response and
rescue efforts” and said
“Whatever you need, we
are here for you.”
The crash took place 200
miles off the coast, accord
ing to the U.S. military.
Japanese officials said
it occurred closer to the
coast, about 60 miles, and
that’s where the search and
rescue mission found the
two crew members.
Japan’s Maritime Self-
Defense Force, which
dispatched aircraft and
vessels to join in the search
operation, said Japanese
rescuers found one of the
crew from the fighter jet
in stable condition. The
Marines said the crew
member was taken to a hos
pital on the base in Iwakuni
and was in fair condition,
but did not provide details.
Japan’s coast guard also
joined the search.
Yemen takes steps to war resolution
DAVID KEYT0N I Associated Press
An exterior view of Johannesberg Castle, in Rimbo, north of Stockholm, Sweden,
Tuesday Dec. 4.
BY NABIH BUL0S
Tribune News Service
BEIRUT — Talks to bring peace
to Yemen began Thursday with an
announcement the warring sides agreed
to a prisoner swap that would allow
thousands of families to be reunited.
The agreement was heralded as the
first of what negotiators hope will be
several confidence-building measures
that create momentum to resolve a con
flict that began in 2014 and became so
brutal that the United Nations long ago
gave up counting the dead.
“I don’t want to be overly optimistic,
but I want to be over-ambitious,” Mar
tin Griffiths, the U.N. special envoy to
Yemen, told reporters in announcing
the prisoner swap.
He said other early steps could
include ending the Saudi-led blockade
of the airport in the Yemeni capital,
halting an offensive on the port city of
Hodeidah and implementing economic
measures aimed at preventing an
impending famine.
The talks, which are being held in a
Swedish castle in the town of Rimbo,
just north of Stockholm, are not formal
peace negotiations but preliminary dis
cussions known as consultations.
It was the second time Yemeni Presi
dent Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi’s gov
ernment has met with Houthi rebels.
The first talks, back in 2016, lasted 100
days and devolved into more fighting.
The current talks are scheduled to
last a week. There will be no face-to-
face contact between the two sides.
Instead, Griffiths and his associates will
go back and forth between two rooms
in the castle.
The warring sides were willing to
meet largely at the behest of the out
side powers that are embroiled in
the conflict and have grown weary as
the world’s worst humanitarian crisis
drags on.
The United States has provided logis
tical support, intelligence and billions of
dollars worth of arms, to a coalition led
by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates. They fight alongside tribal
militias, international mercenaries and
even al-Qaida with the aim of stopping
the Houthis and their Iranian backers.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
pushed for the talks last month.
The slaying of Saudi journalist Jamal
Khashoggi has upped the pressure to
end the war, as the CIA has pinned the
killing on Saudi Crown Prince Moham
med bin Salman and U.S. lawmakers
have sought to punish him by cutting off
military support for the war.
“The people of Yemen have suffered
far too long,” U.S. State Department
spokeswoman Heather Nauert said this
week. “The parties owe it to their fellow
Yemenis to seize this opportunity.”
“We have no illusions that this pro
cess will be easy, but we welcome this
necessary and vital first step,” it said.
Tens of thousands of civilians have
been killed in airstrikes and shelling
during the war and multitudes more
were maimed or went missing. At the
same time, the country is facing a chol
era epidemic and a famine.
The U.N. estimates that 22 million
Yemenis — more than three-quarters
of the population — need humanitar
ian assistance. With the economy in tat
ters, civil servants have gone unpaid for
months, and farming and fishing work,
the main source of livelihood for many,
has been disappearing.
On Thursday, the U.N. World Food
Program said the number of people fac
ing a food crisis could soon climb from
15 million to 20 million, with another
237,000 facing “a food castastrophe” if
aid does not get through.
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