For nearly two weeks, Interpol has been circulating a broad international call for the arrest of Julian Assange, the founder of the WikiLeaks whistle-blowing organization, for questioning on sex crimes, Interpol said on its website Wednesday. In a statement issued from its headquarters in Lyon, France, the international police agency said that it had issued the call Nov. 20, two days after Swedish prosecutors won court approval for a warrant that Interpol could circulate, and that it had only now received Sweden's authorization to make its action public. The whereabouts of Assange, 39, are unknown, but the sequence suggested that if he wanted to flee Britain, his last known location, without being arrested, he might have had to do so within 48 hours of the Swedish court ruling. The development came as several newspapers, including The New York Times, published confidential documents from a mass of some 250,000 diplomatic cables from the State Department in Washington including communications concerning U.S. policy in Iran, Pakistan, Korea and many other places. In its statement, Interpol said its 188 member countries had 'been advised to ensure that their border control agencies are made aware of Assange's Red Notice status, which is a request for any country to identify or locate an individual with a view toward their provisional arrest and extradition.' The Swedish prosecutor's office said almost two weeks ago that a court in Stockholm had approved its request for the arrest of Assange to face questioning on charges that he has strongly denied and that WikiLeaks has dismissed as 'dirty tricks' meant to punish him for his organization' work. Two weeks ago, Marianne Ny, director of the Stockholm prosecutor's office, said in a statement that she had moved to have Assange extradited to Sweden on suspicion of 'rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion.' The accusations were first made against Assange after he traveled to Sweden in mid-August and had brief relationships with two Swedish women that he has described as consensual. Attempts to reach Ny on Wednesday to clarify what action was being taken to secure Assange's arrest and return to Sweden were unsuccessful. According to accounts that his accusers gave to the police and friends, they both had consensual sexual encounters with Assange that became non-consensual. One woman said that Assange ignored her appeals to stop after a condom broke. The other woman said that she and Assange had begun a sexual encounter using a condom, but that Assange did not comply with her appeals to stop when it was no longer in use. Assange has questioned the veracity of those accounts. Lawyers acting for Assange appealed against the arrest warrant at Sweden's highest court Tuesday, The Associated Press said in a report that also quoted President Rafael Correa of Ecuador as dismissing an offer of residence in his country made to Assange by a lower official. A spokesman for Scotland Yard said the force had received 'no intelligence' that Assange was in London and said that British police, following what he described as normal practice in the case of Interpol Red Notices, were not involved in an active effort to arrest him. Although officers are not dedicated to finding Assange, who is Australian, the spokesman said 'if that intelligence comes in, or we have reason to believe that a person who has a red notice out on them is in a certain location, we will find them and extradite them as per the international rules.' Unconfirmed reports Wednesday, attributed to WikiLeaks associates, said that Assange was staying out of sight somewhere outside London. The cell phones of two close associates of Assange seemed to be switched off with recorded messages saying their owners were outside Britain. A Web report by the British Guardian newspaper, which has developed close ties with Assange in the months that the Guardian, The Times and other publications have been preparing stories based on the WikiLeaks documents, said Tuesday that Assange was 'in a secret location somewhere outside London with fellow hackers and WikiLeaks enthusiasts.' A U.S. journalist based in New York said that he had had contact with aides to Assange in recent days over a possible interview and had been told to prepare for a meeting with him in Britain sometime in January. Other reports suggested that Assange might have fled Britain for a country where he was less likely to be arrested, but these may have originated with Assange's own statements in recent weeks suggesting that he might have to go to Moscow or Havana -- statements that left open the possibility that he was dramatizing the difficulties he has encountered in finding a safe refuge, rather than outlining an actual plan. Nor was it clear exactly how Assange's situation had been changed by the Interpol notice. With the threat of detention hanging over Assange, any public appearance, interviews or other activity that indicates his whereabouts could result in his arrest. If he remained in Britain, he would need to stay out of sight -- something that would hold little novelty for him. After founding WikiLeaks in 2006, Assange adopted an elusive lifestyle, spending long periods in hiding, shuttling from one country to another, and mixing brief public appearances with a more common pattern of 'appearing' remotely for interviews and panel discussions by video link over the Internet. At times, he has also altered his appearance, dyeing his prematurely white hair blonde, then black, and cutting it short. Assange arrived in Britain from Sweden in the fall, telling reporters he was concerned about possible action against him by U.S. or British security agencies in retaliation for WikiLeaks' earlier decision to post hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. military documents on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in separate releases in July and October. In recent days, he has communicated his views from undisclosed locations. On Monday, he addressed reporters by video link, and in an interview Tuesday with Time magazine, Assange spoke for 36 minutes by Skype, using the occasion to call for the resignation of Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton and to assert that the State Department had rejected a request from WikiLeaks to review some of the material being published. Assange said that all the released documents were redacted 'carefully.' 'They are all reviewed and they're all redacted either by us or by the newspapers concerned,' he said, according to Time. He added that WikiLeaks had formally asked the State Department for assistance with that. 'That request was formally rejected,' he said. Asked about his moral justification for publishing the leaks, Assange denied that his actions constituted civil disobedience. 'This organization practices civil obedience, that is, we are an organization that tries to make the world more civil and act against abusive organizations that are pushing it in the opposite direction,' he said. 