Julian Assange should confront sex claims, says Swedish Foreign Minister Carli Bildt

SWEDISH Foreign Minister Carl Bildt has encouraged the Australian Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to do the "decent thing" and confront the sexual assault allegations against him in Sweden.
Mr Bildt, who arrived in Australia on Monday and yesterday discussed a range of global security issues with Foreign Minister Bob Carr, told The Australian that Mr Assange's attempts to avoid extradition to Sweden would not have any impact on bilateral relations.

But the Australian-born computer hacker was urged by the Swedish Foreign Minister to leave the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he has been holed up for the past eight months in breach of his bail conditions.

Mr Assange says he fears the US will seek to extradite him from Sweden to face charges relating to WikiLeaks' release of thousands of classified US documents.

"It's essentially an issue between Mr Assange and the UK judicial system and the Swedish judicial system," Mr Bildt said yesterday.

"I think the decent thing for him to do is go and answer those questions from the Swedish prosecutor. I really fail to understand why he doesn't do that ... I don't know how long he wants to be held up at in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. It's a rather strange way of spending his life."

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/assange-should-confront-sex-claims-says-swedish-foreign-minister/story-e6frg6so-1226587208022