London:
A Swedish prosecutor said on Thursday that she would seek a court order for the arrest of Julian Assange, founder of the WikiLeaks whistle-blower's Web site, for questioning on charges of rape and other offenses.
Mr. Assange's lawyer in Britain, Mark Stephens, said the allegations were "false and without basis."
In recent weeks, Mr. Assange has made several public appearances in London, after ending a stay of several weeks in Sweden and flying first to Berlin, then to London, in early October.
It was not immediately clear whether the 39-year-old Australian remains in Britain.
A statement issued by Marianne Ny, the director of the Stockholm prosecutor's office, said an arrest warrant for Mr. Assange would be sought at a court hearing to be held in the Swedish capital at 2 p.m. local time on Thursday.
She said that "more information concerning the hearing and its consequences" would be made available after the court session.
"I request the District Court of Stockholm to detain Mr. Assange in his absence, suspected of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion," Ms. Ny's statement said, in an English version provided by her office.
"The reason for my request is that we have been unable to interrogate him. So far, we have not been able to meet with him to accomplish the interrogations."
Mr. Stephens said in a statement that "over the last three months, despite numerous demands, neither Mr. Assange, nor his legal counsel has received a single word in writing from the Swedish authorities relating to the allegations." It added that the prosecutor's "behavior is not a prosecution, but a persecution."
"Our client has always maintained his innocence," the statement said. "The allegations against him are false and without basis. As a result of these false allegations and bizarre legal interpretations our client now has his name and reputation besmirched."
"My client is now in the extraordinary position that, despite his innocence, and despite never having been charged, and despite never receiving a single piece of paper about the allegations against him, one in ten Internet references to the word "rape" also include his name. Every day that this flawed investigation continues the damages to his reputation are compounded," the statement said.
Mr. Assange founded WikiLeaks in 2006 as a forum for publishing secret and confidential documents of political, military and economic significance passed to the organization by whistle-blowers who have obtained them from governments, corporations and other sources.
This summer, WikiLeaks posted on its Web site a cache of 77,000 secret Pentagon documents on the war in Afghanistan, and it followed that last month by posting nearly 400,000 Pentagon documents, also secret, on the Iraq war.
On both occasions, the documents were provided in advance to The New York Times, the Guardian of Britain and Der Spiegel magazine in Germany, all of which ran extensive articles focusing on the insights the documents gave onto the United States' conduct of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Obama administration condemned both leaks, and demanded that WikiLeaks "return" all secret American documents and undertake not to publish any more in future.
The Pentagon and the Justice Department have established a task force to probe all aspects of the affair, and officials have said that prosecution of Mr. Assange and his associates under the 1917 Espionage Act is one step under consideration.
The allegations of rape and sexual molestation against the WikiLeaks founder arose shortly after he arrived in Sweden in late August on a journey that he described at the time as aimed at establishing a secure base for himself and WikiLeaks under Sweden's broad press freedom laws.
The two Swedish women, volunteers who had offered to assist WikiLeaks, met the Australian in his first days in Sweden. In a confused legal sequence, the Stockholm prosecutor's office first issued a warrant for Mr. Assange's arrest, then withdrew it, and later announced that it was continuing to investigate the rape and sexual molestation charges.
Mr. Assange responded at the time by saying that he was a victim of "dirty tricks" and that his relations with the two women were consensual. Subsequently, in London, he spoke of a "smear campaign" against him and WikiLeaks, and complained about the Swedish prosecutor's delay in disposing of the case. During an interview in London with The New York Times on October 17, he said 50 days had passed since the Swedish allegations were first made public.
The prosecutor's action on Thursday came more than 12 weeks after the prosecutor's office made its first statement in the affair, saying it wanted to interview Mr. Assange.
The Thursday statement implied that no interview had ever taken place. Mr. Assange has spoken on a number of occasions in recent weeks of his growing anxiety about his personal security.
He suggested at a news conference in London on October 23 that he might have to move to Moscow or Havana, Cuba, in his search for a secure base.
In recent days, WikiLeaks supporters have made moves to establish a legal base for WikiLeaks in Iceland, where Mr. Assange spent several weeks earlier this year.
Daniel Ellsberg, the 79-year-old American military analyst who provided The New York Times and other publications with copies of the secret Pentagon documents on the Vietnam War that became known as the Pentagon Papers in 1971, flew to London from California to support Mr. Assange at the mid-October news conference which he held in conjunction with the publication of the secret Iraq war documents on the WikiLeaks Web site.
"Choose Havana," Mr. Ellsberg said, after the Australian spoke of his possible destinations, prompting laughter from Mr. Assange and many of his supporters.
In his statement, Mr. Stephens, the lawyer, said his Mr. Assange had "repeatedly offered to be interviewed, first in Sweden, and then in the U.K. (including at the Swedish Embassy), either in person or by telephone, videoconferencing or email and he has also offered to make a sworn statement on affidavit."
"Before leaving Sweden Mr. Assange asked to be interviewed by the prosecution on several occasions in relation to the allegations, staying over a month in Stockholm, at considerable expense and despite many engagements elsewhere, in order to clear his name. Eventually the prosecution told his Swedish lawyer Bjorn Hurtig that he was free to leave the country, without interview, which he did," the statement said.