WIKILEAKS, the whistleblowing website, should again be fully operational next month.

In the meantime, its founder, Julian Assange, is concentrating on fund-raising. ''To reclaim the organisation's future survival, WikiLeaks is now forced to temporarily suspend its operations and move into a phase of fund-raising," Mr Assange said in a statement released in London yesterday.

"Wikileaks is now forced to temporarily suspend its operations and move into a phase of fund-raising" ... Julian Assange. Credit:Reuters

Mr Assange also revealed at a news conference that WikiLeaks would reactivate its confidential document submission system from November 28, the first anniversary of the group's massive release of leaked US diplomatic cables.

WikiLeaks's electronic drop box gives whistleblowers a mechanism to anonymously upload leaked documents for publication. What has been described as a "military-grade encryption system" has been offline for more than a year after the former WikiLeaks spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg and another disgruntled WikiLeaks team member removed critical software and crippled the central element of the group's operations.