Ecuador granted political asylum¹ to WikiLeaks' founder² Julian Assange on Thursday, a day after it said Britain had threatened to raid the Ecuadorean embassy in London to arrest the former hacker³.

 

Britain has said it is determined⁴ to extradite（引渡） him to Sweden, where he is accused of rape⁵ and sexual assault. Assange fears he will ultimately be sent to the United States which is furious that his WikiLeaks website has leaked hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic and military cables.

 

Ecuador's Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said his country feared for the safety of the Australian, who had lodged⁶ an asylum request with President Rafael Correa, a self-declared enemy of "corrupt⁷" media and U.S. "imperialism⁸（帝国主义）".

 

Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague said that London would not allow Assange safe passage out of the country.

 

Patino told a news conference in Quito that Assange's extradition⁹ to a third country without proper guarantees was probable, and that legal evidence showed he would not get a fair trial if eventually transferred to the United States.

 

"This is a sovereign decision protected by international law. It makes no sense to surmise¹⁰（猜测） that this implies a breaking of relations (with Britain)," he said.

 

Even after Thursday's decision Assange's fate is still far from clear: Britain has said it could strip the Ecuadorean embassy of its diplomatic status, which would expose him to immediate¹¹ arrest by the British authorities.

 

"The United Kingdom does not recognize the principle of diplomatic asylum," Hague said. "There is no ... threat here to storm the embassy."

 

Hague said the impasse¹²（僵局） could go on for a considerable time.

 

Assange has been holed up inside Ecuador's embassy in central London for eight weeks since he lost a legal battle to avoid extradition to Sweden.

 

WikiLeaks said Assange would give a live statement in front of the Ecuadorian embassy on Sunday, although it was unclear whether he would risk arrest by venturing out of the building or would simply appear at a window or by a video-link.

 

In a statement posted earlier by WikiLeaks on its Twitter page, Assange said Ecuador's decision was "a historic victory".

 

"It was not Britain or my home country, Australia, that stood up to protect me from persecution¹³, but a courageous¹⁴, independent Latin American nation."

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