Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who has spent more than two years inside Ecuador’s London embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden, yesterday said he planned to leave the building “soon”. Photo: John Stillwell/Reuters

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has spent over two years in Ecuador’s London embassy to avoid a sex crimes inquiry in Sweden, said yesterday he planned to leave the building “soon”, but Britain signalled it would still arrest him if he tried.

Assange made the surprise assertion during a news conference alongside Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino. But his spokesman played down the chances of an imminent departure, saying the British government would first need to revise its position and let him leave without arrest, something it has repeatedly refused to do.

The 43-year-old Australian fled to the embassy in June 2012 to avoid extradition for questioning in Sweden over sex assault and rape allegations, which he denies.

He says he fears that if extradited to Sweden he would then be handed over to the United States, where he could be tried for one of the largest information leaks in US history.

Assange would be arrested if he exited the London embassy because he has breached his British bail terms.

“I am leaving the embassy soon ... but perhaps not for the reasons that Murdoch press and Sky news are saying at the moment,” Assange told reporters at the embassy in central London.

Police standing guard during a news conference by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in central London, yesterday. Photo: Toby Melville/Reuters

Britain’s Sky News, part owned by Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox, had earlier reported that Assange was considering leaving the embassy due to deteriorating health.

WikiLeaks began releasing thousands of confidential US documents on the Internet in 2010.

That embarrassed the United States, and some critics say it put national security and people’s lives at risk.

Ecuador later granted Assange political asylum. But he was unable to leave Britain and has ended up living in the embassy’s cramped quarters in central London.