WikiLeaks under fire after delegation travels to Syria to meet Bashar al-Assad
Updated 23 minutes ago
ABC NEWS
The Federal Opposition has accused the WikiLeaks Party of irresponsibility after some of its members travelled to Syria to meet with the country's president Bashar al-Assad.
The Syrian president released a Twitter photo on December 23 which appeared to show the meeting.
The delegation reportedly included WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's father John Shipton, who is currently the WikiLeaks Party chairman.
In a statement posted on the Wikileaks Party website in the lead-up to the meeting, a spokesman said the purpose of the trip was to show solidarity with the Syrian people and to voice opposition to Western military intervention.
"While the WikiLeaks Party recognises the needs for political reforms in Syria and to fight against corruption and abuses of human rights, it does not support achieving this by violence, Western military intervention and destruction of the country," the statement said.
"Due to security concerns and because of the high levels of violence in Syria, we cannot give detailed information about the delegation."
Labor frontbencher Chris Bowen says sending a delegation to Syria was not appropriate.
"That is an extraordinary thing for them to do," he said.
"[It] underlines their irresponsible approach.
"The Assad regime has been widely criticised and correctly criticised around the world.
"And for an Australian political party to think it's sensible to go and have discussions and try and provide some legitimacy, is something I think which they have to explain."
The ABC has contacted the WikiLeaks Party for a response.
What do you think of the WikiLeaks Party sending some of its members to meet with Bashar al-Assad? Have your say.
Chemical deadline passes without action as carnage continues
The visit came as Syrian forces were accused of killing civilians in a series of 'barrel-bomb' air strikes in the northern city of Aleppo.
Opposition activists said regime helicopters dropped barrels full of explosives on a vegetable market and next to a hospital in the city, which has become a key battleground in the country's two-year civil war, which has so far killed more than 100,000 people.
On Monday, disarmament teams returned Scandinavian escort vessels to port in Cyprus after they accepted that an end-of-year deadline for the removal of Syrian chemical weapons could no longer be met.
The Norwegian frigate Helge Ingstad was ordered back to port along with a Danish warship that had been deployed to escort the dangerous cargo to destruction under international supervision, Norwegian spokesman Lars Hovtun said.
He gave no new date for the planned shipment.
"We are still on high alert to go into Syria," he said. "We still don't know exactly when the orders will come."
The international disarmament mission in Syria acknowledged on Saturday that it was "unlikely" the weapons could be transported to the Syrian port of Latakia in time for the December 31 deadline set for the removal of key weapons components.
The year-end deadline was the first key milestone under a UN Security Council-backed deal arranged by Russia and the United States that aims to wipe out all of Syria's chemical arms by the middle of 2014.
"Preparations continue in readiness for the transport of most of the critical chemical material from the Syrian Arab Republic for outside destruction," said a joint statement from the UN and Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
However, at this stage, transportation of the most critical chemical material before 31 December is unlikely."
ABC/AFP
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