LONDON — Ecuador said Tuesday that it had cut off Julian Assange’s access to the internet in his exile in the country’s London embassy, making clear that it feared being sucked into an effort to “interfere in electoral processes” in the United States by the activities of the WikiLeaks founder.

Ecuador said that it was not evicting Mr. Assange from its embassy, where he sought asylum four years ago. It said that its “temporary restriction” of internet services to Mr. Assange “does not prevent the WikiLeaks organization from carrying out its journalistic activities.”

But it was clearly intended to keep the embassy from being the control center for that leaking operation. “The government of Ecuador respects the principle of nonintervention in the affairs of other countries,” it said in a statement, “and it does not interfere in the electoral processes in support of any candidate in particular.”

The internet cutoff was the latest twist in the odd tale of Mr. Assange’s self-imposed exile, which began in 2012 when he sought refuge from a Swedish rape investigation that he said was a cover for an American effort to extradite him. Since then, his world has shrunk to a single apartment inside the small diplomatic compound in central London. He has communicated through the embassy’s internet connections, visitors and, presumably, cellphones that would give him another form of internet access.