PARIS: Interpol called Wednesday for the arrest of WikiLeaks’ shadowy founder as his site’s dumping of secret US cables exposed deep tensions between the United States and Pakistan over nuclear arms safety.
France-based Interpol said it had alerted all member states to arrest 39-year-old Australian, Julian Assange, who is wanted in Sweden for questioning over the alleged rape and molestation of two women.
Assange’s mother said she did not want her son, who has denied the charges, "hunted down".
Christine Assange told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that she was feeling "as any mother would be, very distressed" that authorities were looking for her son.
"He’s my son and I love him and obviously I don’t want him hunted down and jailed," she said from her home in Queensland.
Meanwhile Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani called in US ambassador Cameron Munter for talks on Wednesday as WikiLeaks’ steady release of 250,000 US cables sent shockwaves around the diplomatic community.
Islamabad reacted angrily to suggestions by US diplomats that its nuclear weapons could fall into terrorist hands.
International fears over the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal "are misplaced and doubtless fall in the realm of condescension," foreign office spokesman Abdul Basit told AFP.
"There has not been a single incident involving our fissile material, which clearly reflects how strong our controls and mechanisms are."
The anger stems from a 2009 cable in which then US ambassador Anne Patterson reportedly wrote: "Our major concern is not having an Islamic militant steal an entire weapon but rather the chance someone working in government of Pakistan facilities could gradually smuggle enough material out to eventually make a weapon."
A 2008 cable reportedly warned: "Pakistan is producing nuclear weapons at a faster rate than any other country in the world."
The Guardian, which was given advance access to the memos released by the Internet whistleblower, said the documents showed greater US concern about Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal than previously revealed publicly.
The cables cited serious British concerns and also quoted the Russians as saying: "There are 120,000-130,000 people directly involved in Pakistan’s nuclear and missile programs… There is no way to guarantee that all are 100 percent loyal and reliable."
The Guardian also highlighted another leak which revealed French President Nicolas Sarkozy irritated his Saudi hosts during a January 2008 visit to Riyadh to push French interest in multi-billion-dollar defence and infrastructure contracts.
Sarkozy "was viewed as less than gracious" at some ceremonial events, for avoiding traditional Arab food and appearing bored during a traditional sword-dance; one leaked cable is reported as saying.
The offences were "minor in substance, but significant to Saudi sensibilities," a US official wrote.
The hunt for Assange sparked by the Interpol request would likely focus on Sweden and Britain, where the elusive former computer hacker spends much of his time.
Assange is said to rarely sleep in the same place twice. Ecuador’s left-leaning government initially offered Assange residency, but President Rafael Correa backtracked Tuesday.
In one of a series of defiant media interviews, Assange boasted that he was ready with a fresh "mega leak" that could take down a major bank, leading Bank of America shares to tumble more than three percent Tuesday on speculation.
Assange told Forbes magazine that the bank leak would "give a true and representative insight into how banks behave at the executive level in a way that will stimulate investigations and reforms, I presume."
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates also tried to play down the leak, telling reporters that some reactions have been "significantly overwrought."
"Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for US foreign policy, I think fairly modest," said Gates, a former CIA director and intelligence analyst.
But Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice presidential candidate who is popular with many US conservatives, denounced what she called the Obama administration’s "incompetence."
"Did we use all the cyber tools at our disposal to permanently dismantle WikiLeaks?" she wrote on Facebook, asking if the United States had requested that NATO and the European Union disrupt the website.
Palin called for the United States to treat WikiLeaks like a terrorist organization by freezing the assets of people working for it.
