The WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, says he is fit enough to spend another five years inside the tiny Ecuadorean embassy in London, Ecuador’s foreign minister said on Monday, as it was announced that British and Ecuadorean legal experts would try to resolve the impasse.

Despite the news of the legal talks – which followed a meeting on Monday morning between the British foreign secretary, William Hague, and his Ecuadorean counterpart, Ricardo Patiño – neither London nor Quito is showing any sign of backing down.

The Foreign Office said “no substantive progress” had been made during the discussions, while Patiño told a press conference that Assange’s situation was “totally unjust”.

Patiño said his government and Assange himself were prepared for a long waiting game, with the WikiLeaks founder telling him he was fit enough to spend another five years inside the embassy, in which he will have been holed up for exactly a year on Wednesday.

Assange walked into the embassy in Knightsbridge last June in an attempt to avoid extradition to Sweden to face sexual assault and rape allegations, which he denies. Ecuador granted him political asylum two months later but the British authorities have made it clear that he will be arrested if he leaves the building.

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