WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange might talk to X Eurasian Media Forum participants on Skype

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange won’t be able to attend the X Eurasian Media Forum to be held in Astana late April, Tengrinews.kz reports, citing the Forum’s General Producer Vladimir Roerich. According to him, “Mr. Assange is under home arrest (…) It’s a form of detention”. However, Mr. Roerich doesn’t rule out a Skype conference. “Mr. Assange doesn’t give his phone number to everyone. He is not easy to contact”, the Forum’s Director General Ruslan Zhemanov added. Among other invited guests the conference organizers named Former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, Mikhail Gorbachev (the first and the last President of the USSR), ex-President of the neighboring Kyrgyzstan Ms. Roza Otunbayeva. April 26-27 Astana will be hosting the X Eurasian Media Holding, an annual gathering of journalists, political figures, scholars, media experts and businessmen. This year’s event will focus on economic and political state of the Eurozone, prospects of the EU, the African Spring and its repercussions, WikiLeaks’ role in political processes, and the Customs Union. The Eurasian Media Forum is the most prominent international media initiative in Eurasia aimed at defining the strategic role of Eurasia in world affairs, exploring a new approach to international relations, promoting equality of access to reliable public information throughout the area and encouraging the highest standards of journalism. The Eurasian Media Forum was initiated by the Kazakhstan National Khabar News Agency and was officially registered as a non-political, non-profit, non-governmental organization — Eurasian Media Forum Foundation — in Almaty in September 2001. In 2002 the Foundation opened its Representative Office in Moscow for better interaction with the Russian and CIS media communities and established a London-based working group.