h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A comment I'd thought i'd throw in, just to see if a discussion blew up

The embassies are not extra-terrtorial, they simply, as you said, are safe from entrance by citizens of the host country
The same accords that give them the protection require the embassy to follow every national law - sheltering people inside is against those laws, and the accords themselves - so what should be done with Ecuador, not to mention say the US in China

I certainly agree with keeping the Ecuador embassy around, rather than declaring the ambassadors PNG, let alone avoiding the horrific mess of entering the embassy, and the catastrophic consequences of the US being removed from China don't bare thinking about, - but there must be a limit

You've got a point, Nbb - the embassies are supposed to obey the laws of the host countries. And when they don't, you get tension.

Do you remember the case of Cardinal Mindszenty of Hungary? Here's a short bit from the US Embassy in Hungary about a plaque they put up there:

http://hungary.usembassy.gov/reminiscence.html

In 1956, there was an uprising in Hungary. The Communists were going to arrest the Cardinal. He moved into the US embassy - and stayed there for 15 years. The government in Hungary were not happy about this at all.

So, yeah, there's room for discussion. I just thought I'd offer a bit of background from the old photo files.

I did know about this one, the problem is once someone gets into the embassy, and provisionally kept there, even for a day by the ambassador, that person (assuming any importance to either country) becomes a political tool - either as a way to annoy/please (by handing over) the host country, or to benefit the government back in the sending country

So this causes a set of strife around the embassy itself.
Your mention of Iran's "failing" to protect the US embassy (assuming no non-tactit approval of the attack) is an especially poor move, it was put in to avoid loopholes of letting "criminals" do a country's dirty work for it - if a government fails to protect an embassy every other country is entitled to pull its diplomatic links. In some cases it might be smart to do this - reminding countries that might think to fail in their obligations that there will be diplomatic consequences other than the ones they want
(there was the very lengthy recent "what use is diplomatic immunity" thread

Also amusingly i found out recently that if a government is forced to remove its personnel from a country its property remains protected (even in war time) - so countries have to give temporary protection of it to another country - obviously a neutral country is generally used so the Swiss, at any one time, have dozens more embassies than they should as they look after buildings where the diplomats have been PNGed

I didn't know that about the Swiss. That's interesting! But it makes sense.

True, the ins and outs of this can get hairy. It's a simple and necessary principle: if you don't respect embassies, you can't talk to each other. But in practice, all these little headaches turn up.

During the Cold War, of course, the USSR and the US had spies as 'cultural attaches', bugged each other's embassies whenever possible, etc, etc. A complicated and often silly game. And today, of course, Washingtonians and New Yorkers complain endlessly and loudly about misbehaviour by the staff of various embassies.

I suspect that the problem in the present situation in the UK is that neither side is going to back down. As you said, it's usually a political ploy, and can be resolved with diplomacy.

Using diplomacy to solve problems caused by diplomacy is difficult - especially when you only have two solutions to a problem - it has to make one country back down

The only real way to break it with diplomacy is either if their is a third option, to avoid either country losing face - that would be something like the US/Sweden promising not to extradite to the US
Or
If there was something that Ecuador/UK needed from the other country outside of this problem - it could be "traded" for their wish

That's true. (Elektra just said something about bananas...)

And I think that's where the problem is going to stay, unless either side is willing to back down, which I doubt will happen.

I agree, if Sweden and the US would agree to non-extradition, the problem could probably be resolved.

Barring that, it's going to get expensive for the UK. I understand it's costing a lot to guard that embassy.

Not apparently as much as i might have thought (though of course, things like when he did his little speech took a lot)
And its causing significant problems for the embassy, our anger at them notwithstanding

Reducing presence is not really problematic - if they just let him go, then even if he got out the embassy, he'd have to try and sneak out - hard to do (not really his skill type), and since hes been made aware of the warrant (i assume hes noticed) he's avoiding arrest all the time - so not only is he going to be tried he's can still be tried for resisting and avoiding arrest here
- he'd have to make it all the way to Ecuador to be safe. Only Africa would be a safe place to stop on the way - Europe will hand him over very happily (well i assume they'd just send him to Sweden, but still (whole new set of legal proceedings for extradition! What fun) because their covered by the same EAW we are
the US is not really a smart place for him to run to.

He might be able to sneak out by sea, but not by air, and sea isn't going to cut it for him

If they try to send him in a big diplomatic box, we can demand to open it (as long as a Ecuadorian dip is present) - they can refuse but it just gets sent back to their embassy

Yeah, that's come up a few times - there have been instances of people being smuggled in diplomatic bags, etc. All spy-vs-spy stuff.

It kind of reminds me of all the shenanigans back in the day, when people were trying to get out of East Germany.

As you say, not really the right skill set for a computer guy.

well yeah there were those sealed trains that left - in theory they could have been stopped, but why bother - they otherwise would have caused problems for the USSR - they wouldn't want them,

Thanks to the cold war they stopped accrediting anyone who applied for a dip visa - too many agents on both sides getting into the country

-Ecuador (and us) could have problems with getting diplomats into each other's countries for a bit - sort of a slow burn of breaking diplomatic linnks

Yeah. It might cause some travel problems, as well.

I remember the Cold War, and being the only passenger in the car on a train crossing the border from Austria into Hungary. About four soldiers had to come in, wake me up, and then go through the whole car with a flashlight, looking under every seat. I bit my lip and kept quiet. That sort of stuff tended to be a bit ludicrous.