I returned to the UK today to be astonished by private confirmation from within the FCO that the UK government has indeed decided -- after immense pressure from the Obama administration -- to enter the Ecuadorean Embassy and seize Julian Assange. This will be, beyond any argument, a blatant breach of the Vienna Convention of 1961, to which the UK is one of the original parties and which encodes the centuries -- arguably millennia -- of practice which have enabled diplomatic relations to function. The Vienna Convention is the most subscribed single international treaty in the world. The provisions of the Vienna Convention on the status of diplomatic premises are expressed in deliberately absolute terms. There is no modification or qualification elsewhere in the treaty. Article 22 1.The premises of the mission shall be inviolable. The agents of the receiving State may not enter them, except with the consent of the head of the mission. 2.The receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the premises of the mission against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the mission or impairment of its dignity. 3.The premises of the mission, their furnishings and other property thereon and the means of transport of the mission shall be immune from search, requisition, attachment or execution. Not even the Chinese government tried to enter the US Embassy to arrest the Chinese dissident Chen Guangchen . Even during the decades of the Cold