Ecuador offers residency to WikiLeaks’ Assange

Julian Assange

QUITO, (Reuters) – An Ecuadorean government official  has invited the founder of the WikiLeaks whistleblower website  to live and lecture in the country, days after the site caused  an international uproar by releasing additional sensitive U.S.  documents.
Deputy Foreign Minister Kintto Lucas told local media that  Ecuador was attempting to get in touch with WikiLeaks chief  Julian Assange to invite him to the country, praising his work  as an investigator.
Ecuador is part of a leftist bloc of governments in South  America, including Venezuela and Bolivia, that have been highly  critical of U.S. policy in the region.

Julian Assange
Julian Assange

More than 250,000 State Department cables were obtained by  WikiLeaks and given to media groups, which began publishing  stories on Sunday exposing the inner workings of U.S.  diplomacy, including candid and embarrassing assessments of  world leaders. WikiLeaks previously had released U.S. documents  on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“We are inviting him to give conferences and, if he wants,  we have offered him Ecuadorean residency,” Lucas said in an  interview published on Tuesday in local newspaper Hoy.
Australian citizen Assange’s whereabouts are not known and  he is believed to move from country to country. He had been  seeking residency in Sweden but is now wanted in that country  on sexual abuse charges that the former hacker says are part of  a conspiracy against him.
Asked if the offer of residency was a formal invitation  from the government, Lucas said, “sure.”
The U.S. government said on Monday it deeply regretted the  release of any classified information and would tighten  security to prevent leaks such as WikiLeaks’ disclosure of a  trove of State Department cables. The U.S. Justice Department  said it was conducting a criminal investigation of the leaks.