The reason that such creative recourse might

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Alternatively, it might be that the Secretary of State ‘withdraws his acceptance … in relation to [the] land’, in the words of section 1(3)(b). The catch, however, is section 1(4), which stipulates that ‘[t]he Secretary of State shall only … withdraw acceptance if he is satisfied that to do so is permissible under international law’, and there is seemingly nothing in the VCDR or customary international law which would permit the UK to withdraw its acceptance once the sending State’s permanent diplomatic phone number library mission is established in London. Moreover, if there were, it is highly likely, as in the case of declaring a diplomatic agent persona non grata, that a collateral rule of international law would give the sending state a reasonable time to shut down the mission and leave. It is inconceivable that international law would permit the receiving state to send its authorities onto the premises before the mission vacated it.

be had to section 1(3)(a) DCPA in order to assert the power to arrest Mr Assange on embassy premises is that the rule of inviolability laid down in article 22(1) VCDR is, on its face, absolute. Whatever goes on inside the embassy, the local authorities may not enter it without permission, a position affirmed almost uniformly by subsequent state practice. The only justification or excuse for non-observance of the inviolability of embassy premises would be if one of the circumstances precluding wrongfulness recognized in chapter V of Part One of the Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts were to be made out. Candidates include self-defence and distress.