As authorities close in on Julian Assange, the controversial Wikileaks founder has blasted Australia's response to the scandal, saying the Federal Government has thrown away his rights in an attempt to pander to US interests.
The 39-year-old Australian has embarrassed the US government and foreign leaders by leaking thousands of secret American diplomatic cables.
And Swedish authorities have issued a fresh arrest warrant over sex crime allegations against Mr Assange, who is believed to be hiding in Britain.
Mr Assange broke his silence in an online Q&A session for the Guardian newspaper, in which he questioned the motives of the Australian Government.
"I am an Australian citizen and I miss my country a great deal," he wrote.
"However, during the last weeks the Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and the Attorney General, Robert McClelland, have made it clear that not only is my return impossible but that they are actively working to assist the United States government in its attacks on myself and our people."
Prime Minister Julia Gillard has been heavily critical of Mr Assange, labelling him 'grossly irresponsible' and calling the leaks illegal.
The Attorney General, Robert McClelland, has asked the AFP to investigate whether Mr Assange has broken any laws in leaking the US diplomatic cables.
In response, the Wikileaks head questioned the value of his citizenship, comparing his treatment to that of David Hicks.
"This brings into question what does it mean to be an Australian citizen - does that mean anything at all," he wrote.
"Or are we all to be treated like David Hicks at the first possible opportunity merely so that Australian politicians and diplomats can be invited to the best US embassy cocktail parties."
But Mr McClelland has stopped short of cancelling Mr Assange's passport, saying it would be counter-productive.
The Attorney General says Australian authorities considered cancelling his passport but decided against it.
"There has been some discussion as to whether it would be counter productive to remove the identification that would trigger the law enforcement processes," he said.
Mr Assange's London-based lawyer Mark Stephens said he was not aware whether authorities in Britain had yet received the latest international arrest warrant, which was issued in relation to allegations of rape and sexual molestation.
However, Mr Stephens confirmed that any potential arrest of his client would take place by arrangement.
He added: "The last warrant took 10 days to come through, we know that it was incompetently filled out, so another one was sent on Friday.
"So I expect another 10 days, unless of course they are going to treat Julian Assange differently than anyone else."
Mr Assange has denied the allegations and hinted they could be part of a "smear campaign" designed to distract attention from the leaks.
Funding cut
While authorities zone in on Mr Assange, WikiLeaks faces a fresh threat to its survival after the online payment service PayPal cut off the account used for donations to the whistle-blowing website.
WikiLeaks is already fighting to stay on the Internet. It had to switch its domain to Switzerland because its original web address was shut down by a US provider, as it continues to release tens of thousands of classified US diplomatic cables.
The US-based PayPal, which is owned by auctions group eBay, announced overnight that it would stop taking donations for WikiLeaks thus blocking a key source of its income.
"PayPal has permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks due to a violation of the PayPal acceptable use policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity," it said in a statement.
WikiLeaks blamed "US government pressure" for the PayPal ban, in a message on its Twitter feed.
Meanwhile, some targets of the sometimes brutally frank US diplomats' assessments threw doubt on their credibility.
Afghan president Hamid Karzai said at least one of the incidents described in a cable which portrayed him as corrupt and weak could not have happened as described, while he dismissed others as an attempt by US officials to discredit him and his government.
In one cable, US diplomats said one of Mr Karzai's deputies had transported $SU52 million out of the country in suitcases, a claim Mr Karzai rejected.
US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said on Saturday she had contacted dozens of foreign leaders to smooth over any frictions and will continue to do so for "the next weeks".
"I haven't seen everybody in the world, and apparently there are 252,000 of these things out there in cyberspace somewhere," she said, noting that all of them had not yet been published.
"So I think I'll have some outreach to continue doing over the next weeks just to make sure that as things become public, if they raise concerns, I will be prepared to reach out and talk to my counterparts and heads of state and governments."
The release marked the third major publication of secret US files by WikiLeaks this year, after the site had published tens of thousands of US military files from the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts.
WikiLeaks was forced to turn to Switzerland for a new domain name after its original wikileaks.org address was shut down by an American provider, while Paris tried to ban French servers from hosting it.
The Swiss domain - www.wikileaks.ch - was up and running again on Saturday after migrating to new servers, the group which owns the name said.
