Ecuador foreign minister to meet Assange Sunday

QUITO

Ecuador's top diplomat plans to meet WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Sunday in London, where the Australian whistleblower remains holed up in the South American country's embassy.

Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino's meeting with Assange comes a day before talks with British Foreign Secretary William Hague scheduled for June 17. (READ: Top British, Ecuadoran diplomats to meet June 17 on Assange)

"We hope that the meeting with Foreign Secretary William Hague brings us closer to seeing the case solved," Patino said in a posting on Twitter last week.

Ecuador gave Assange diplomatic protection but London has not granted him safe conduct to leave Britain.

The fugitive has been based at the Ecuadoran Embassy for almost a year as he battles extradition to Sweden to face rape charges.

Assange has denied any wrongdoing, and expressed fears of Sweden sending him on to the United States, where he could face espionage charges for publishing a trove of classified documents.

A harsh critic of US foreign policy, the former computer hacker rose to fame after his website released hundreds of thousands of secret military logs from Iraq and Afghanistan and classified State Department cables.

Two women accuse Assange of rape and sexual assault in 2010, when he was in Stockholm on WikiLeaks business. Assange claims the accusations are part of a smear campaign to discredit his anti-secrecy website.

In a separate development, Ecuador denied reports it had recalled its London Ambassador Ana Alban over her failure to resolve the Assange situation.

"Not true Ambassador Alban has been removed from her position," Deputy Foreign Minister Marco Albuja tweeted.