France-based Interpol said it had alerted all member states to arrest Julian Assange, who is wanted in Sweden for "probable cause of suspected rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion".

Assange's mother said she did not want her son, who has denied the charges, "hunted down".

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 that the possibility that someone working in government nuclear facilities "could gradually smuggle enough material out to eventually make a weapon" was a "major concern".

A 2008 cable reportedly warned: "Pakistan is producing nuclear weapons at a faster rate than any other country in the world."

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 programmes... There is no way to guarantee that all are 100 percent loyal and reliable."

Meanwhile, Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was furious Wednesday at suggestions by US dipomats that he had secret accounts in Swiss banks and was involved in fraud, adding that aides were seeking to prosecute the authors of the offending cable.

"I do not have one penny in Swiss banks," Erdogan said in an angry speech at a public ceremony in Ankara.

He urged Washington "to call to account" its diplomats for "slander derived from lies and inaccurate opinions," adding that his aides were looking into ways of legal action against the cable authors.

"We have heard from two contacts that Erdogan has eight accounts in Swiss banks," the cable said.

"His explanations that his wealth comes from the wedding presents guests gave his son and that a Turkish businessman is paying the educational expenses of all four Erdogan children in the US purely altruistically are lame."

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.

Assange, whose current location is unclear, contested the warrant in a Swedish appeals court, but his first bid to get it thrown out was rejected last week and he has lodged a second appeal.

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.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates tried to play down the mass 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.

burs/db/co

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