assange's passport must be guaranteed-brown

Julian Assange's passport must be guaranteed says Australian Greens leader Bob Brown

* From: AAP
* December 10, 2010 11:24AM



AUSTRALIAN Greens leader Bob Brown has called on the Federal Government to guarantee the passport of WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange.

Senator Brown says he has written to Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd asking that Mr Assange be allowed to return to Australia "free of persecution".

"He's obviously under intense pressure for simply disseminating documents that any self-respecting newspaper, including The Times of London and The Australian, would print if they were given access to those documents," he said in Canberra today.

Senator Brown described as "interesting" the latest revelation that Mr Rudd, while prime minister, said the war in Afghanistan "scares the hell" out of him.

"That's simply another comment on the failure of governments to bring our troops home safely to Australia in a war which is nasty, brutish and has no end in sight.


"It says there is a limit to the honesty in politics ... once governments or oppositions take a position they'll always foster that position at the expense of the complexity of issues like Afghanistan."

Mr Rudd's comments were a "very cogent further reason" for the government to consider a much further exit strategy from Afghanistan.

"As the Dutch have done," Senator Brown said referring to the phased withdrawal of forces from The Netherlands.

It would be a mistake for the government not to indicate that it had "serious misgivings" and not to communicate with the public about how difficult this situation was in Afghanistan.

Australian troops were only in Afghanistan because of ties with the US, Senator Brown said.

"When you drill down it's not for the good of Afghanistan.

"It's for the good of the relationship with another country who's committed to Afghanistan, but that's not in Australia's own interests."