Special Wikileaks Report Cover all over the Diplomatic Disclosures
Clinton telephones Zardari, discusses WikiLeaks' disclosures
ISLAMABAD: US Secretary of State Ms. Hillary Clinton telephoned President Asif Ali Zardari Thursday night. The two leaders talked about bilateral matters with reference to the recent publication of so called memos and official correspondence by the Wikileaks.
Spokesperson to the President Farhatullah Babar said that the two leaders agreed that the Wikileak publications were not only unauthorized but also out of context and were based on raw information that did not reflect the correct nature of the purported official correspondence.
They also agreed that the so called leaks will not be allowed to cast a shadow on the strategic partnership between the two countries.
The spokesperson said that the so called leaks of official memos is already a thing of the past and the president looks forward to the future and the promise it holds.
'We're not spies,' US tells Argentina amid cable leaks
BUENOS AIRES: "We're not spies," a spokeswoman for the US embassy in Buenos Aires said Thursday, as the mission sought to repair damage to ties caused by the release of secret US diplomatic cables.
Shannon Farrell's comments came after US documents leaked by whistleblower website WikiLeaks showed the United States has ordered its diplomats to play a larger intelligence role by performing espionage work like obtaining the credit card and frequent flyer numbers of foreign dignitaries.
The cables alluding to work usually associated with the Central Intelligence Agency and other spy bodies were sent to embassies in Africa, the Middle East, eastern Europe, Latin America and the US mission to the United Nations.
"We're not spies. We don't carry out espionage. We collect information. The fact we do so in private doesn't mean we are spies," Farrell told Radio El Mundo.
She admitted, though, that "many people are bothered" by information in the embassy's cables -- much of it classified or secret -- being made public.
Argentina is among the countries that have reacted most acidly to the WikiLeaks revelations, after discovering cables in which US diplomats questioned Argentine President Cristina Kirchner's mental state, and in which a former senior Argentine official privately told US embassy staff that Kirchner's late husband and predecessor Nestor Kirchner was a "psycopath."
Another cable judged Argentina indifferent to cracking down on money laundering. And yet another saw the State Department enquiring about the possibilities of Argentina taking military action -- possibly with Venezuela -- to disrupt British oil prospecting off the Falkland Islands, according to the Spanish daily El Pais.
The divulgations threatened to further fray already uncomfortable ties between Washington and Buenos Aires.
Argentine Economy Minister Amado Boudou this week blasted as "shameful" a cable signed off by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asking about Cristina Kirchner's nerves and whether she was on medication.
Argentina's state news agency Telam reported that Clinton had telephoned Kirchner on Thursday to "provide explanations" of the missives.
The US embassy amplified that task, with Farrell saying that "our job is and always has been to generate contacts and inform our country. Many people don't know what a diplomat's job is about. The issue is that the information was meant to remain private."
She added: "Now that this has been published, I understand that many people are bothered by what has been written in the cables, and I can assure them that we ourselves are bothered."
Farrell said, however, that calls by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and some US media commentators for Clinton to resign were being ignored.
"Clinton will not resign. For us, she is an extraordinary leader," she said.
Assange faces new arrest warrant
STOCKHOLM: Sweden said Thursday it would issue a fresh arrest warrant for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as new revelations from his website's expose of US diplomatic cables saw Russia branded a "mafia state". While the elusive whistleblower laid low, his British lawyer insisted police knew his whereabouts and it emerged that an initial warrant was defective.
After the Supreme Court in Stockholm refused to hear an appeal by Assange against the initial warrant over allegations of rape and molestation, Swedish police said they would issue a new one as a result of a procedural error.
"It's a procedural fault," Tommy Kangasvieri of the Swedish National Criminal Police told a foreign news agency. "The prosecutor Marianne Ny has to write a new one." While Assange has not been seen in public since WikiLeaks began leaking around 250,000 cables on Sunday, his London-based lawyer Mark Stephens denied he was on the run.
"Scotland Yard know where he is, the security services from a number of countries know where he is," Stephens said.
"The (British) police are being slightly foxy in their answers, but they know exactly how to get in touch with him, as do the Swedish prosecutors."
Britain's Times newspaper said that Assange was at a location in southeast England although there was no confirmation from Stephens.
After former US vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin said the WikiLeaks team should be treated like a terrorist organisation, a spokesman for the website said Assange feared for his life.
"When you have people calling, for example, for his assassination, it is best to keep a low profile," Kristinn Hrafnsson said in London, after right-wing US websites and pundits called for him to be assassinated.
Assange's mother also expressed fear for her son's safety.
"I'm concerned it's gotten too big and the forces that he's challenging are too big," Christine Assange told the Courier Mail, her local newspaper in Queensland, Australia.
Assange's Stockholm-based lawyer Bjoern Hurtig Thursday said he would fight his client's extradition to Sweden in the event of his arrest.
The US State Department's spokesman described Assange as an "anarchist" as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to smoothe feathers ruffled by the leaks as she toured Central Asia.
Some of the most eye-catching of the latest revelations centred on Russia with one memo quoting a Spanish prosecutor describing it as a virtual "mafia state" whose political parties operate "hand in hand" with organised crime.
Jose Gonzalez, who has been investigating Russian organised crime in Spain for a decade, also agreed with poisoned dissident Alexander Litvinenko's thesis that Russian intelligence and security services "owned organised crime."
In a separate leaked cable sent shortly after Litvinenko's death in London in 2006, US Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried questioned whether Russian Prime Minister Putin knew beforehand of the plot to kill the dissident.
In a meeting with a senior French diplomat, Fried asked "whether rogue security elements could operate... without Putin's knowledge," given the leader's "attention to detail."
The cables have also quoted Defense Secretary Robert Gates as saying "Russian democracy has disappeared" and describing President Dmitry Medvedev as "Robin" to Putin's "Batman."
But in an interview with CNN, Putin said Gates was "deeply misled" and warned US officials not to "interfere" in Russia's internal politics.
Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva also had sharp words for Washington, saying the cables highlighted US hubris.
"They have laid bare a mindset in which the Americans thought they were better than other," he told Brazilian radio.
As the leaks piled on embarrassment for his administration, President Barack Obama named Russell Travers, an anti-terrorism expert, to lead efforts to mitigate the damage and prevent future illegal data disclosures.
The State Department has already temporarily suspended Pentagon access to some documents. WikiLeaks is believed to have obtained the cables from Bradley Manning, a disgruntled army intelligence officer.
WikiLeaks was thrown off its Web host Amazon, best known as a book retailer. After several hours, WikiLeaks was again accessible in the United States via a European server.
WikiLeaks disclosures interesting: Thomson
KARACHI: British High Commissioner in Karachi Adam Thomson Thursday described the documents disclosed by WikiLeaks as information based on facts and being interesting. However, the British High Commissioner refused to comment on the revelations coming to light by the US Embassy Cables leaked by WikiLeaks.
Nawaz disappointed Saudia by breaking promise: WikiLeaks
WASHINGTON: The US diplomat reported to Washington that the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the US Adel Al-Jubeir maintained that Nawaz Sharif first promised the Saudis not to engage in political activity or return to Pakistan, but he then flew to Pakistan from London in a direct violation of his commitment.According to a leaked US cable, Saudia Arabian authorities backed Pervez Musharraf to have Nawaz Sharif arrested if he returned from exile.
"We can either support Musharraf and stability, or we can allow bin Laden to get the bomb,", Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the US Adel Al-Jubeir told Charge d'Affaires Michael Gfoeller at a lunch in November 2007.
The then Pakistani President visited Saudi Arabia in 2007 and meet King Abdullah after completing Umra in Mecca. Al-Jubeir told the US diplomats that Musharraf had not come to the Kingdom to meet exiled former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif but carefully avoided ruling out such meeting.
The US diplomats claimed that during the meeting the Saudi Ambassador boldly asserted that, "We in Saudi Arabia are not observers in Pakistan, we are participants." Al-Jubeir is a senior royal advisor who has worked for King Abdullah almost a decade.
"He (Al-Jubeir) asserted that the Saudi government had offered Sharif a pledge of protection and asylum in the Kingdom after his ouster by Musharraf in return for a promise that he would refrain from political activity for ten years," Gfoeller said in the cable.
The US diplomat also reported to Washington that the Saudi ambassador maintained that Sharif instead of sticking to his promise began attempting to test the limits of this promise five or six years in his exile.
"Sharif broke his promise by conducting political activity while in the Kingdom," al-Jubeir reportedly charged.
Jubeir also supposedly told the the US officials that when the Saudi Government had permitted Sharif to travel to London, he first promised the Saudis not to engage in political activity or return to Pakistan, but he then flew to Pakistan from London in a direct violation of his commitment.
Expressing 'disappointment' with Sharif, the Saudi Government 'worked directly with Musharraf to have Sharif arrested on his return to Pakistan and immediately deported to the Kingdom, according to the ambassador.
In the document, US officials claimed that Al-Jubeir stated the terms of Sharif's asylum agreement that the Kingdom would seek to control Sharif's movements in the future, even suggesting that he would be kept in a state only a little less severe than house arrest.
"Al-Jubeir added that he sees neither Sharif nor former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto as a viable replacement for Musharraf. 'With all his flaws,' he said of Musharraf, 'he is the only person that you or we have to work with now,'" Gfoeller reported back to Washington.
Zardari told US; 'We are because of you'
ISLAMABAD: On May 26 in Islamabad, US Representatives Schiff and Schwartz held a meeting with PPP leader Zardari and his foreign policy team. Zardari thanked the USG for its support of credible parliamentary elections, which brought his party to power: "We are here because of you."
Zardari noted that his late wife, Benazir Bhutto, maintained close relations with many of member of Congress, and he encouraged more codel visits to Pakistan to improve mutual understanding.
Text of the cable:
Friday, 30 May 2008, 16:03
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 ISLAMABAD 001998 SIPDIS
EO 12958 DECL: 05/30/2018
TAGS PGOV, PK, PREL, PTER
SUBJECT: CODEL SCHIFF MEETS WITH PPP LEADER ZARDARI: POLITICAL MOVES AND BALANCING AID
Classified By: Anne W. Patterson, Reasons 1.4 (b), (d)
1. (C) Summary: On May 26, Codel Schiff -- U.S. Representatives Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Allyson Schwartz (D-PA) -- met with Pakistan People's Party (PPP) Co-Chairman Asif Zardari, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, NSA Ambassador Mahmud Ali Durrani and Ambassador-designate to the U.S. Husain Haqqani. Zardari thanked the Codel for USG support of credible national elections. As he has previously, he committed Pakistan to the war on terror, insisting this was Pakistan's fight. He argued more needed to be done by the U.S. and international community to promote economic development in the frontier. Building on that point, Zardari suggested a new blend of USG assistance, increasing aid to "civilian forces" like the police and promoting civilian engagement. He warned that public opinion was unalterably against President Pervez Musharraf and that, for the sake of the new GOP, Musharraf needed to contemplate an "honorable exit." End summary.
"We are because of you." BB returned after getting 'clearance' from US: WikiLeaks
KARACHI: Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan after getting 'clearance' from the US. President Asif Ali Zardari told this to the then US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne W Patterson after the assassination of BB, US embassy cables revealed.
According to the US embassy cables, Zardari held meeting with Patterson on 25th January 2008 in which he opened his remarks by saying that the US is "our safety blanket" and recounted how Benazir had returned despite the threats against her because of support and "clearance" from the US.
However, Zardari quickly moved on to the PPP succession. He shared a photocopy of a one-page handwritten will from Benazir in which she bequeathed the party to him. This document, Zardari said, would be published in an upcoming book authored by Benazir.
He said that he opposed to launch a FIR over Benazir's death because Pakistan did not afford any more chaos.
US embassy cables revealed that Zardari was not much interested in who the sniper was or exactly how Benazir was killed. This was not as important as finding out who financed the killing, who were the "hands behind" it. Ambassador said that we believed Baitullah Mehsud was responsible; Zardari dismissed this by saying that Mehsud was "just a pawn" in the process. Assange appeal in sex crimes rejected
LONDON: Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder, has been refused permission by Sweden's highest court to appeal against an arrest order issued over alleged sexual crimes, said UK based newspaper The Telegraph on Thursday. Mr Assange has denied the allegations, which were made earlier this year after he visited the country. His lawyer lodged an appeal against the arrest order at the High Court this week but the court has now refused to consider the case.
"The High Court has not granted a leave to appeal, so the Svea Court of Appeals ruling still stands," High Court official Kerstin Norman said.
Helena Ekstrand, a Swedish Prosecution Office spokesman, said the office had not received any information as to the location of Assange.
"So the situation now is that the arrest warrant still stands and we are looking for Julian Assange," she said.
WikiLeaks released secret US diplomatic cables this week, some of which are embarrassing and which show the thinking behind Washington's international relations.
Mr Assange is reportedly in southeast England, although his exact whereabouts are unknown. His lawyer, Mark Stephens, said that British police and the security services "from a number ofcountries", know where he is.
The international police agency Interpol this week issued a "red notice" to assist in the arrest of Assange.
Putin defends as Russia dubbed 'mafia state' in US cables
MOSCOW: Prime Minister Vladimir Putin defended the honour of Russia after it was branded a "mafia state" in the WikiLeaks memos and he was accused of being aware of a plot to murder a dissident in London.
As the whistleblowing website's founder Julian Assange, wanted by Interpol over rape allegations in Sweden, remained out of sight, one of his close associates voiced fears that he could be assassinated.
The United States meanwhile named an anti-terrorism expert to lead a review of security in the wake of the leaks of some 250,000 US diplomatic cables which has embarrassed and angered Washington's friends and foes alike.
Some of the most eye-catching of the latest revelations centred on Russia with one memo quoting a Spanish prosecutor describing it as a virtual "mafia state" whose political parties operate "hand in hand" with organised crime.
Spanish prosecutor Jose Gonzalez told US officials that "he considers ... Russia to be a virtual 'mafia state'" where "one cannot differentiate between the activities of the government and organised crime groups," the memo said.
Gonzalez, who has been investigating Russian organised crime in Spain for a decade, also agreed with poisoned dissident Alexander Litvinenko's thesis that Russian intelligence and security services "owned organised crime."
The memo, sent in February of this year from the US embassy in Madrid, cited the senior prosecutor as claiming that "certain political parties in Russia operate 'hand in hand' with organised crime".
In a separate leaked cable sent shortly after Litvinenko's death in London in 2006, US Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried questioned whether Putin knew beforehand of the plot to kill the dissident.
In a meeting with a senior French diplomatic adviser, Fried asked "whether rogue security elements could operate... without Putin's knowledge," given the leader's "attention to detail."
The cables have also quoted Defense Secretary Robert Gates as saying that "Russian democracy has disappeared" and describing President Dmitry Medvedev as "Robin" to Putin's "Batman."
But in an interview with CNN, Putin said Gates was "deeply misled" about Russian democracy and warned US officials not to "interfere" in Russia's internal politics.
Although relations between Moscow and Washington have thawed in recent months, Putin made clear his annoyance.
"Our country is led by the people of the Russian Federation through the legitimately elected government," he said. "The Russian people have unilaterally made their choice in the direction of democracy in the early '90s. And we will not be led astray."
Sweden says no mistakes were made in Assange warrant
STOCKHOLM: Swedish police said Thursday no mistakes were made when filing an international arrest warrant for Julian Assange, refuting a British report that a Swedish blunder could have delayed the WikiLeaks frontman's arrest.
"For us there is no problem, but we are investigating," Tommy Kangasvieri of the Swedish National Criminal Police told AFP.
"At the moment, we are talking with the UK to know if there is a problem and what it is," he added.
The Times newspaper reported Thursday that British police knew where the Internet whistleblower was -- believed to be a location in southeast England -- but could not act on the information as the European arrest warrant was incorrectly filled out.
Sweden issued an arrest warrant for the 39-year-old Australian on November 18, citing "probable cause of suspected rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion" related to contacts with two women in Sweden in August.
On Tuesday, Assange's lawyer appealed to Sweden's Supreme Court to overturn the ruling that lead to the arrest warrant being launched.
Whistleblowing website WikiLeaks slowly started publishing some 250,000 US embassy cables on Sunday, which has infuriated Washington and embarrassed many governments worldwide. Have security arrangement with India for nuke deal: US told Pak
WASHINGTON: The US had told Pakistan that it needs to put into place a new security arrangement with India as a pre-condition for a much-sought civilian nuclear deal with Washington, according to secret US cables released by WikiLeaks.
Powerful Senator and foreign policy czar John Kerry told President Asif Ali Zardari in a meeting in Islamabad on February 16, 2010, that besides a security arrangement with India, the stability of Pakistan's democratic institutions would also be a determining factor for US to consider a bilateral nuclear deal agreement on the lines of one with India.
"Pakistan's ability to reach a new security arrangement with India and the increased strength of Pakistan's democratic institutions would be necessary conditions for the US to consider civilian nuclear assistance to Pakistan," he told Zardari.
The details of the meeting were reported in a secret cable of the US Embassy in Islamabad.
The United States has termed the release of these secret documents as illegal and an act of crime. At the same time, the US has neither denied or confirmed the authenticity of each of these cable, which is said to number more than 250,000.
During the meeting, Kerry also said that the lingering A Q Khan network remained "an albatross" around Pakistan's neck, the cable said.
When Kerry asked Zardari what effect Obama's announcement of a US drawdown date had had on the possibility of success in Afghanistan, he answered that it had given a boost to those fighting against the US , but that they "live in illusion".
"Zardari doubted that the US would actually leave Afghanistan in two and a half years, adding that 'no one can afford that'," it said.
Kerry, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee asked if dialogue with the Taliban was possible to which Zardari gave a qualified 'yes'.
"In specific regions, like Quetta, dialogue might be possible, but on a larger scale it was not," he said.
According to the cable, Kerry warned Zardari, that his ability to push for a liberalised trade agreement between Pakistan and the US was directly tied to Pakistan's democratic stability and continued cooperation in supporting Afghanistan and defeating terrorists.
"Kerry said that Pakistan also needed to create trade agreements with its neighbours, which would let the Pakistani public know that the GOP was committed to real economic improvement," it said.
Treat India and Pak equally, said Gilani to US
WASHINGTON: Powerful US Senator John Kerry asked Yusuf Raza Gilani to present before India Pakistan's plan of action for fighting terrorism if it was "really serious" in resuming Indo-Pak dialogue, but the Premier expressed concern that the public would not support the idea.
Details of the meeting between Kerry, Chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Gilani on February 16 have been communicated in a confidential cable from the US embassy in Islamabad, which was leaked by WikiLeaks.
During the meeting, Kerry said that in light of the February 13 bombings in Pune, politicians in India were focused on counter-terrorism.
"And as such he suggested that Pakistan present the Indian government with its plan to tackle terrorism," the cable said.
Kerry told Gilani that this would be a clear "confidence builder" that would make India more willing to move forward in talks about Kashmir and water disputes.
He emphasised that the future of India, Pakistan and the US depended on their governments' willingness to "challenge old suspicions" and work together and suggested that Pakistan and India sign a non-aggression pact.
"Kerry said that the US and other countries of goodwill would be prepared to help in any way possible."
According to the cable, Gilani agreed to present Kerry's proposal to the Pakistani leadership.
"He was amenable to the idea of a rapprochement in the India-Pakistan relation, but expressed concern that the public would not support the idea," the cable said.
"Kerry said that in order to gain public support for this initiative, the GOP needed to clearly outline the long-term economic benefits of improved bilateral relations, such as improvements in social development and increased investments and trade, to the Pakistani people," said the cable written by Ann Patterson, the then US Ambassador to Pakistan.
India-Pak relationship
The two leaders are appeared to have discussed at length the India-Pak relationship.
Gilani indicated that Pakistan was willing to resume talks with the Indian government and pointed to the February 25 meeting between Foreign Secretaries of India and Pakistan as evidence of such.
"He added that the GOP and India had also resumed back channel discussions. Gilani said that improving bilateral relations with India was in Pakistan's best interest as it would enable the GOP to focus all of its attention on securing its western border," the cable said.
Gilani, however, noted that in order to gain public support for this process, the US had to "treat India and Pakistan equally." "He added that India would need to gain Pakistan's trust and indicated that reducing the Indian footprint in Afghanistan and halting Indian support of militants in Balochistan would be steps in the right direction," the cable noted.
Kerry said that the Foreign Secretaries meeting had "enormous potential" and urged Pakistan not to allow pressure from the local media and the masses to "derail these efforts."
He argued that dialogue with India was an opportunity to "create new security arrangements that could change the regional dynamics".
While assuring Gilani that the effort would not be US-driven, Kerry indicated that the United States was open to the idea of serving as a mediator to help facilitate the resumption of the Pakistan-India Composite Dialogue.
Zardari on Manmohan Singh
On the same day, Kerry met President Asif Ali Zardari asked him to reach an agreement with India on counter terrorism, but he did not appear to be forthcoming and instead lodged an usual complaint that New Delhi has increased its military budget.
"In a February 16 (2010) meeting with President Zardari, Senator Kerry said that India was very open to constructive talks with Pakistan, and urged Pakistan to reach an agreement with India on counter terrorism.
"Zardari said with US support, talks could move forward," the secret US cable said.
Senator John Kerry opened the February 16 meeting with Zardari by referring to his recent talks Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh and Gilani.
Kerry said Singh was "very open" to negotiation with Pakistan starting with Foreign Secretaries meeting.
"Kerry said that cooperation on counter terrorism with the Indians could lead to Indian compromises on key Pakistani issues such as Kashmir and water use in subsequent meetings.
"Kerry encouraged the Government of Pakistan to come up with specific offers to which the Government of India could respond," the cable said.
Zardari agreed dialogue is the only way forward. However, he justified continued suspicion of India, citing recent "confirmation" that there was Indian involvement in the Mumbai attacks.
He claimed India had increased its military spending 30 percent this year and described this as a direct threat to Pakistan, it said.
When Kerry pointed out the Chinese threat to India, Zardari responded that Indian tanks cannot operate in the Chinese border region and could only be intended for an attack on Pakistan.
India has 4,700 tanks, he explained, while Pakistan has only 2,600.
"Capability creates a fear," he added, the cable said. According to the cable, Kerry said Zardari should put his concerns on the negotiating table as there was a real opportunity for productive conversation between India and Pakistan now: "You could arrive at a surprising consensus of mutual understanding."
Zardari conceded that Singh deserved respect, but said he was not confident about the rest of the Indian government, the US Ambassador wrote.
India must 'decrease footprint in Afghan' to gain Pak trust: Gilani
ISLAMABAD: India needs to "decrease its footprint in Afghanistan and stop interfering in Balochistan" in order to gain Pakistan's trust, Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani told US Senator John Kerry during a meeting earlier this year, according to a leaked US embassy cable posted by WikiLeaks.
"During a February 16 meeting with Senator John Kerry, Prime Minister Gilani spoke at length about the state of the Indo-Pakistani relationship. Gilani indicated that the GOP was willing to resume talks with the Indian government, and pointed to the upcoming meetings between India and Pakistan's Foreign Secretaries as evidence of such," said a cable, which was classified as "confidential".
Gilani further said that Pakistan and India had also resumed back channel discussions, and that "improving bilateral relations with India was in Pakistan's best interest as it would enable the GOP to focus all of its attention on securing its western border."
"Gilani, however, noted that in order to gain public support for this process, the U.S. had to treat India and Pakistan equally. He added that India would need to gain Pakistan's trust and indicated that reducing the Indian footprint in Afghanistan and halting Indian support of militants in Balochistan would be steps in the right direction," revealed the cable.
Kerry told Gilani that the upcoming meeting between the Indian and Pakistani Foreign Secretaries had "enormous potential", and urged the Pakistan government "not to allow pressure from the local media and the masses to derail these efforts."
"Kerry argued that dialogue with India was an opportunity to create new security arrangements that could change the regional dynamic. While assuring Gilani that the effort would not be U.S.-driven, Kerry indicated that the USG was open to the idea of serving as a mediator to help facilitate the resumption of the Pakistan-India Composite Dialogue," the leaked cable said.
The senator pointed out out that following the recent bombing in Pune, India was "focused on counter terrorism ., and suggested that the Pakistan government present the Indian government with its plan to tackle terrorism.
"He (Kerry) said that this would be a clear 'confidence builder' that would make India more willing to move forward in talks about Kashmir and water disputes," said the cable.
He also suggested that Pakistan and India sign a non-aggression pact, and added that "the US and other countries of goodwill would be prepared to help in any way possible".
"Gilani agreed to present Kerry's proposal to the the GOP leadership. He was amenable to the idea of a rapprochement in the India-Pakistan relation, but expressed concern that the public would not support the idea," according to the leaked document.
"Kerry said that in order to gain public support for this initiative, the GOP needed to clearly outline the long-term economic benefits of improved bilateral relations, such as improvements in social development and increased investments and trade, to the Pakistani people," the document added.
US to work with Nawaz if he wins polls: Leaks
KARACHI: The US said it could work with Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) chief Nawaz Sharif, only if he won the elections, according to a WikiLeak cable.
A cable about US-Pak relations said that President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani now do not consider India a major threat, as according to them, terrorists straddling Pak-Afghan border form the main part of threat to the country.
The cable said Pakistan should be stopped from exploiting terrorism and tribesmen as a tool in its foreign policy.
To make Afghan war a success, Pakistan government will have to be asked as to the sort of the government acceptalbe to Islamabad.
Militants will exploit either weak civilian government or a return to military rule that lacks popular legitimacy, so we should help the Zardari/Gilani government complete its full five-year term in office.
We can work with Nawaz Sharif if he wins the next election, but Zardari is our best ally in Pakistan right now, and U.S. interests are best served by preventing another cycle of military rule.
Qureshi will remind us that the GOP needs an international democracy dividend in the form of economic aid, improved governance, and effective law enforcement.
US to part ways if gets Osama, Pak fears
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan feared that US will again desert Islamabad after they get Osama Bin Laden due to which Pakistan hesitates to fully cooperate with its key ally, WikiLeaks reveals quoting Anne W Patterson.
Anne W Patterson said that the relationship between the two countrues is one of co-dependency they grudgingly admit--Pakistan knows the U.S. cannot afford to walk away; the U.S. knows Pakistan cannot survive without our support.
She said that militants will exploit either weak civilian government or a return to military rule that lacks popular legitimacy, so we should help the Zardari/Gilani government complete its full five-year term in office. We can work with Nawaz Sharif if he wins the next election, but Zardari is our best ally in Pakistan right now, and U.S. interests are best served by preventing another cycle of military rule.
Pak, US to come out of WikiLeaks’ impact soon: Holbrooke
WASHINGTON (Sami Ibrahim): Describing the " WikiLeaks" dump as nothing more than an unfortunate incident which struck great allies and friends, US Special representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan Holbrook said that the 'leaks" will neither change the Pak-US relations nor will it affect the Washington's support for Pakistan.
Talking exclusively to this Geo News correspondent Sami Ibrahim on phone Wednesday, Holbrook said Pakistani leadership was the first one to be contacted by US administration on this issue way before these documents were started to be made public. ' I spoke with President Zardari on this issue at length, Ambassador Munter met with Prime minister Gilani. Secretary State Clinton is reaching out to President Zardari at this moment and foreign minister Shah mehmood Qureshi was also taken into confidence " he said
Holbrook said Pentagon was in complete touch with army chief Gen ishfaq Pervez Kayani. Admiral Mike Mullen also spoke with Gen Kayani.
To a question about what led to Wikileaks disclosure, Holbrook said the computers were changed in 2005 and the job of distribution of papers was also assigned to these new computers but no one knew at that time the computers would itself distribute the classified documents as well .But " the problem is fixed and there was no chance of any leaks of such documents in future ; he added.
He said the relations between the two countries were not transitional rather they were in strategic phase and " even today in a top level meeting in White house it has been decided that United states would continue supporting Pakistan: he added.
He said President Zardari would come to USA and President Obama would also be visiting Pakistan next year. 'We are committed to fully implement what would be agreed in each individual department in strategic dialogue" he added.
Holbrook said that there are always ups and downs in the relations between great friends and allies and Pak-US relations are also seeing the same but " nothing could impact the strength of relations between the two countries and we would be out of the impact of the Wikileaks soon " he added. Musharraf tells McCain Osama might be in Bajaur: WikiLeaks
WASHINGTON: WikiLeaks has disclosed the conversation between US Senator John McCain and former president Pervez Musharraf in which latter talked about the possibility of the presence of Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri in Bajaur Agency.
The US embassy cables disclosed Musharraf as saying that although he had no direct evidence, he thought al Qaeda leaders Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri were hiding in Bajaur Agency, bordering Afghanistan's Konar province where US forces were not deployed.
Musharraf, however, added that Mullah Omar was not present in Balochistan. WikiLeaks website shut on US pressure
WASHINGTON: The US struck its first blow against WikiLeaks after Amazon.com pulled the plug on hosting the whistleblowing website in reaction to heavy political pressure.
The company announced it was cutting WikiLeaks off yesterday only 24 hours after being contacted by the staff of Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate's committee on homeland security.
WikiLeaks expressed disappointment with Amazon, and insisted it was a breach of freedom of speech as enshrined in the US constitution's first amendment. The organisation, in a message sent via Twitter, said if Amazon was "so uncomfortable with the first amendment, they should get out of the business of selling books."
Cables’ disclosure perfectly legal, says WikiLeaks
LONDON: The disclosure of a trove of confidential U.S. diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks is perfectly legal, a spokesman for the whistle-blowing website said on Wednesday.
Kristinn Hrafnsson said people had a right to know what officials working on their behalf were doing and dismissed concern that the publication of classified U.S. communications would damage cooperation between countries.
"If global stability is based on deception and lies, maybe it needs a bit of a shaking up," he told.
WikiLeaks has shaken the diplomatic world by publishing excerpts of more than 250,000 confidential cables in partnership with five Western newspapers.
The disclosures have angered the United States by exposing the inner workings of U.S. diplomacy, including candid assessments of world leaders.
"I think in general that all communications should be public as possible," said Hrafnsson, a former Icelandic television journalist now working for WikiLeaks. "There may be some justification for secrecy but in general we are talking about officials who are working on behalf of the people, and the people have the right to know.
"WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange, an Australian-born former computer hacker, leads a nomadic existence and keeps his location a secret for fear of reprisals, but Hrafnsson said he personally had no concerns about his own position. "We are doing a good thing. We are doing this for the general public," he said. "I think it is perfectly legal. We haven't heard any justification or reference to an illegal code that we are supposed to have broken, so we don't think we have broken any law."
He said only a few hundred of the thousands of cables had been published and it could take months to disclose them all. "We believe that transparency is the basis of healthy democracy. It is one of the foundations of what we base our operation on. A world without secrets is a better world.
Obama names point man to prevent new leaks
WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama on Wednesday named an anti-terrorism expert to lead US efforts to mitigate the damage of the WikiLeaks breach and prevent future illegal data disclosures, the White House said.
Russell Travers, deputy director of information sharing at the National Counterrorism Center, "will lead a comprehensive effort to identify and develop the structural reforms needed in light of the Wikileaks breach," the White House said in a statement.
WikiLeaks cables a 'colossal scandal' for US: Castro
HAVANA: The trove of classified and secret US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks is a "colossal scandal" for the United States, former Cuban leader Fidel Castro said Wednesday.
"The United States is involved in a colossal scandal as a result of the documents published by WikiLeaks whose authenticity -- independent of whatever might have been the motives of this website -- has not been put into doubt by anyone," Castro wrote in a piece published by Cuban newspapers.
His island's media, like those in most countries around the planet, have seized on the revelations, though none has made direct reference to the cables mentioning Cuba.
One cable published by WikiLeaks Tuesday showed US diplomats writing they had reliable information that Cuba was harboring members of Spain's armed separatist Basque group ETA who were helping FARC guerrillas in Colombia.
Another mentioned US worries that Cuban intelligence services were exerting an influence in Venezuela, where they had direct access to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Leak shows US working for good: military chief
WASHINGTON: The head of the US military said Wednesday that the sensitive discussions laid bare by a massive leak of diplomatic cables showed that the United States was working for good.
Admiral Mike Mullen said that the dump of thousands of internal memos by WikiLeaks "frankly appalls me" and accused the activist website of "knowingly placing lives at risk."
But Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the exposed conversations showed that the United States was "a global power with relationships all over the world."
"I don't mean this arrogantly, but I've lived in Europe, I've been a part of NATO, I've lived in the Pacific. I understand what United States leadership means and brings," Mullen said at the Center for American Progress think-tank.
"That doesn't mean we always have it right, that doesn't mean that we don't make mistakes -- because we do," he said.
"But we as a country choose to engage because we think that in engaging and focusing on and trying to solve the problems, it leaves a region, a relationship and a world potentially in a better place," he said.
Kayani said he disliked Zardari: WikiLeaks
WASHINGTON: Pakistan's army chief COAS Kayani mused about forcing out civilian President Asif Ali Zardari who has made preparations for a coup or assassination, leaked US diplomatic cables said Tuesday.
The latest tranche of memos, obtained by whistleblower site WikiLeaks and reported by American and British newspapers, also showed that the United States was more concerned than it let on publicly about Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.
General Ashfaq Kayani, chief of Pakistan's powerful military, told the US ambassador during a March 2009 meeting that he "might, however reluctantly," pressure Zardari to resign, according to cable cited by the papers.
Kayani was quoted as saying that he might support Asfandyar Wali Khan, leader of the Awami National League Party, as the new president -- not Zardari's arch-nemesis Nawaz Sharif.
According to Anne W. Patterson, the then US Ambassador to Pakistan, Kayani made it clear that regardless of how much he disliked Zardari, he distrusted Nawaz even more.
In another cable quoted by both newspapers, US Vice President Joe Biden recounted to Britain's then prime minister Gordon Brown a conversation with Zardari last year.
Zardari told him that Kayani and the Inter-Services Intelligence agency "will take me out," according to the cable. The paper said the cables also showed that Zardari has made extensive preparations in case he is killed.
Tensions between Zardari and the army are no secret, and Pakistan often witnesses coup rumors.
After Kayani met in September with Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, the now-exiled Musharraf quipped: "I can assure you they were not discussing the weather."
Zardari named sister as succeeding president: WikiLeaks
LONDON: Pakistan's president, Asif Ali Zardari, whose wife, Benazir Bhutto, was killed in a suicide bombing, has made extensive preparations in case of his own assassination, said The Guardian citing a document leaked by WikiLeaks. Last year Zardari told the US ambassador, Anne Patterson, that if he was assassinated, "he had instructed his son Bilawal to name his sister, Faryal Talpur, as president".
This year Zardari requested the United Arab Emirates to allow his family to live there in the event of his death. His wife lived in self-imposed exile in the UAE for years before her ill-fated return to Pakistan in 2007.
The cables provide a changing portrait of Zardari, America's key Pakistani ally along with the army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani. A sharp-edged 2008 description of Zardari notes that he hails from a tribe with "little social standing" in Sindh; "there is a story that as children, Sindhis were told 'a Zardari stole it' if something went missing".
But later dispatches portray him as a more capable leader, with considerable political nous, although often burdened by his association with deep-seated corruption.
Zardari is frank about the strength of the Taliban – "I'm sorry to say this but we are not winning" the war against extremists he told the US vice-president, Joe Biden, in 2009 – and his own limitations.
"I am not Benazir, and I know it," he told the US ambassador after his wife's death.
And he fears a fresh army coup. Zardari said he was concerned that Kayani might "take me out", Biden reported to Gordon Brown during a meeting in Chile in 2009. Brown said he thought it unlikely.
The observations on Pakistan's often beleaguered president are part of several portraits about prominent Pakistani politicians that are dotted with insight, colour and some surprises.
In November 2007 Maulana Fazlur Rehman, leader of the country's most fiercely pro-Taliban religious party, hosted a jovial dinner for Patterson at which he sought her backing to become prime minister and expressed a desire to visit America.
"All important parties in Pakistan had to get the approval" of the US, said his aide Abdul Ghafoor Haideri. After the meeting Patterson commented on the mullah's famously wily political skills. "He has made it clear that … his still significant number of votes are up for sale."
The cables also highlight the contradictions of other prominent Pakistanis. Officials noted that Amin Fahim, a Bhutto supporter hoping to become prime minister, led a religious Islamic group "while enjoying an occasional bloody mary".
The opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif had a "notoriously difficult personality" while his family is noted to have "relied primarily on the army and intelligence agencies for political elevation".
America's perceived influence on Pakistani power politics is a frequent theme. In a May 2008 meeting with a visiting American congressional delegation, Zardari said: "We won't act without consulting with you."
Sharif repeatedly told the US ambassador he was "pro-American", despite his often critical public stance. He thanked the US for "arranging" to have Kayani appointed as army chief. "The best thing America has done recently," he said.
"The fact that a former prime minister believes the US could control the appointment of Pakistan's chief of army staff speaks volumes about the myth of American influence here," the ambassador noted tartly afterwards.But some dispatches make it clear that the Americans do wield great clout. After General Pervez Musharraf resigned as president in 2008, ambassador Patterson pressed Zardari to grant him immunity from prosecution. "We believed, as we had often said, that Musharraf should have a dignified retirement and not be hounded out of the country," she said.
The US – and Kayani – worried that Zardari would renege on his word. "Zardari is walking tall these days, hopefully not too tall to forget his promise to Kayani and to us on an immunity deal," wrote Patterson.
If Zardari didn't protect Musharraf then it would make him look bad. "I have to bring the army along with me," he said, also noting that the delay "does nothing for Zardari's reputation for trustworthiness".
The notable exception to that US influence, however, is the former cricketer Imran Khan, who delivered a long lecture to visiting US politicians about the iniquities of US policy.
Welcoming the group at his grand home outside Islamabad, Khan hosted an "hour-long, largely one-sided, and somewhat uncomfortable conversation".
To defeat the Taliban the US had to understand the "tribal character" of the militants, he said, and described the Pakistani drive against the Taliban in 2009 as "stage-managed" for US consumption.
There are apercus in the cables into the often inscrutable military leaders. Kayani is "direct, frank, and thoughtful" and has "fond memories" of time spent on a military training course in the US. It is also noted that "he smokes heavily and can be difficult to understand as he tends to mumble." The Inter-Services Intelligence chief, Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, was "usually more emotional" than Kayani.
US diplomats also have a ringside seat to civilian wrangles. In February 2009 Zardari aide Farahnaz Ispahani said the president was "very unhappy" with the way the prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, had "gone off the reservation". In 2008 Zardari said Fahim "had spent most of the [election] campaign in Dubai (with his latest 22 year-old wife) and was simply too lazy to be prime minister".
The cables also record embarrassing mistakes in the embassy's efforts to manage its relationships with Pakistan's power elite. Six months after his dinner with the ambassador, Rehman was less enamoured of US policy when the FBI issued a notice suggesting he had orchestrated a suicide bombing in Islamabad.
The embassy asked the FBI to urgently recall the notice – he had been confused with another man with a similar name. Rehman was a "frequent and co-operative interlocutor with post and professes his support for co-operation with the United States", the request said.
U.S. disappointed on release of Dr. Qadeer: Leak
WASHINGTON: In early 2008, when rumors floated that Pakistan was about to release from house arrest Abdul Qadeer Khan, the man who created the world’s largest black market in nuclear technology, the Bush administration stayed silent, disclosed a cable unveiled by WikiLeaks on US based New York Times newspaper. Struggling to get Pakistan’s help in the war against Al Qaeda, it could not risk reminding the world of a case Pakistani officials kept saying was closed.
In private, it was a different story.
Richard A. Boucher, the top State Department official for South Asia, wrote on April 10, 2008, that the embassy in Islamabad should “express Washington’s strong opposition to the release of Dr. Khan and urge the Government of Pakistan to continue holding him under house arrest.” Releasing him, he wrote, would “undermine” what Pakistan had done to fight proliferation.
“The damage done to international security by Dr. Khan and his associates is not a closed book,” he wrote, noting that the United States and others were still dealing with the Khan network’s sale of technology to Iran and North Korea “and possible other states.”
The world, he said, was dealing “with the reality that the uranium enrichment technology and nuclear weapons designs that were sold to Libya are now available to other states and non-state actors.”
Dr. Khan was released 10 months later. Pakistan has barred him from being interviewed by international inspectors or the United States, including about his allegation that others in the Pakistani government knew of his work.
Pakistan rapidly building nuclear stockpile: Leaks
LONDON: American and British diplomats fear Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme could lead to fissile material falling into the hands of terrorists or a devastating nuclear exchange with India, UK based The Guardian newspapers said citing a leaked cable.
The latest cache of US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks contains warnings that Pakistan is rapidly building its nuclear stockpile despite the country's growing instability and "pending economic catastrophe".
Mariot Leslie, a senior British Foreign Office official, told US diplomats in September 2009: "The UK has deep concerns about the safety and security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons," according to one cable classified "secret/noforn [no foreign nationals]".
Seven months earlier the US ambassador to Islamabad, Anne Patterson, cabled to Washington: "Our major concern is not having an Islamic militant steal an entire weapon but rather the chance someone working in government of Pakistan facilities could gradually smuggle enough material out to eventually make a weapon."
The leak of classified US diplomatic correspondence exposes in detail the deep tensions between Washington and Islamabad over a broad range of issues, including counter-terrorism, Afghanistan and finance, as well as the nuclear question. The cables also revealed that:
• Small teams of US special forces have been operating secretly inside Pakistan's tribal areas, with Pakistani government approval, while senior ministers have privately supported US drone attacks.
• The ambassador starkly informed Washington that "no amount of money" from the US would stop the Pakistani army backing Islamist militants and the Afghan Taliban insurgency.
• The US concluded Pakistani troops were responsible for a spate of extrajudicial killings in the Swat Valley and tribal belt but decided not to comment publicly to allow the army to take action on its own.
• Diplomats in Islamabad were asked by the Pentagon to survey refugee camps on the Afghan border, possibly for air strike targeting information.
• The president, Asif Ali Zardari – whose wife, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated – has made extensive preparations in case he too is killed, and once told the US vice-president, Joe Biden, that he feared the military "might take me out".
Pakistan's rulers are so sensitive about their much-prized nuclear weapons that in July 2009 they stalled on a previously agreed plan for the US to recover and dispose of highly enriched uranium spent fuel from a nuclear research reactor, in the interests of preventing proliferation and theft. They told the US embassy: "If the local media got word of the fuel removal, "they certainly would portray it as the US taking Pakistan's nuclear weapons".
US fears over Pakistan were spelled out in an intelligence briefing in 2008. "Despite pending economic catastrophe, Pakistan is producing nuclear weapons at a faster rate than any other country in the world," the secret cable said.
Leslie, director general of defence and intelligence at the Foreign Office, made clear the UK shared these anxieties when she spoke to US diplomats at a London arms control meeting in September 2009. The Pakistanis were worried the US "will drop in and take their nukes", she said, according to a US cable to Washington. Pakistan was now prepared to accept "nuclear safety help" from British technicians, but only under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The cable said Leslie thought nuclear proliferation was the greater danger to the world, but it "ranks lower than terrorism on the public's list of perceived threats".
Another senior British official at the meeting, Jon Day, the Ministry of Defence's director general for security policy, said recent intelligence indicated Pakistan was "not going in a good direction".
The Russians shared concerns Pakistan was "highly unstable". Yuri Korolev, from the Russian foreign ministry, told US officials: "Islamists are not only seeking power in Pakistan but are also trying to get their hands on nuclear materials."
Speaking in February in Washington, he called for the problem of Pakistani nuclear sites to be addressed in ongoing missile control talks, claiming: "Over the last few years extremists have attacked vehicles that carry staff to and from these facilities. Some were killed and a number were abducted and there has been no trace seen of them."
Korolev said: "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% loyal and reliable."
He claimed extremists were now recruiting more easily: "Pakistan has had to hire people to protect nuclear facilities that have especially strict religious beliefs, and recently the general educational and cultural levels in Pakistan has been falling."
These fears are expressed in the secret state department files against a backdrop of Pakistani determination to build more nuclear warheads.
A Chinese foreign minister, He Yafei, sought to explain to the Americans why Pakistan was blocking fissile material control talks. At a London meeting in 2009, he said: "The underlying problem … is that India and Pakistan view each other as enemies. Nuclear weapons are crucial to Pakistan. Indeed, a Pakistani military leader said his army was no match for the Indian army."
US diplomats in Islamabad were told Pakistan was working on producing smaller, tactical nuclear weapons that could be used on the battlefield against Indian troops. "The result of this trend is the need for greater stocks of fissile material … Strategic considerations point Pakistan in the direction of a larger nuclear force that requires a greater amount of fissile material, Pakistani officials argue."
The US conducted its own secret analysis of India's military contingency plans, which are codenamed Cold Start. India has said that if sufficiently provoked, it would mount a rapid invasion of Pakistan.
The US said in a cable that it doubted the Indian army was capable of doing so: "It is the collective judgment of the mission that India would likely encounter very mixed results. Indian forces could have significant problems consolidating initial gains due to logistical difficulties and slow reinforcement."
But the US ambassador to India, Tim Roemer, warned in February that for India to launch Cold Start, would be to "roll the nuclear dice". It could trigger the world's first use of nuclear weapons since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
"Indian leaders no doubt realise that, although Cold Start is designed to punish Pakistan in a limited manner without triggering a nuclear response, they cannot be sure whether Pakistani leaders will in fact refrain from such a response."
Pakistan 'in tatters'
A senior US intelligence official was "unrelentingly gloomy" about Pakistan, the current safe haven for al-Qaida in the Afghanistan war, during a private briefing of Nato representatives.
Peter Lavoy, national intelligence officer for south Asia, concluded in November 2008 that nuclear-armed Pakistan's economy was "in tatters" and the country could "completely lose control of its Pashtun territories over the next few years", according to a leaked US cable.
More than a third of people were unemployed or underemployed, he said.
"Pakistan's population is becoming less and less educated, the country lacks sufficient energy and clean water resources to serve its population, and there is minimal foreign investment."
A few months later, in April 2009, Patterson was slightly less gloomy, saying Pakistan was not a "failed state".
"We nonetheless recognise that the challenges it confronts are dire. The government is losing more and more territory every day to foreign and domestic militant groups; deteriorating law and order in turn is undermining economic recovery. The bureaucracy is settling into third-world mediocrity, as demonstrated by some corruption and a limited capacity to implement or articulate policy."
She said: "Extremism … is no longer restricted to the border area. We are seeing young Punjabi men turn up in [the tribal areas] and Afghanistan as fighters recruited from areas of southern Punjab where poverty, illiteracy and despair create a breeding ground for extremism."
The good news was that President Asif Ali Zardari "while far from perfect", was "pro-American and anti-extremist; we believe he is our best ally in the government", she said.
This January, however, the US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, told Indian government officials in Delhi that: "the army was the key decision-maker while President Zardari was increasingly sidelined". He said the civilian government had a limited capacity to move against groups behind the Mumbai terror attacks in 2008.
US says relationship with Pak based on 'mutual distrust': Leak
LONDON: US officials think about how to maximise their influence in Pakistan on foot of a doubling of US assistance from $2 billion to $4 billion annually, said a cable leaked by WikiLeaks on UK based Guardian newspaper. But the relationship is fraught with distrust, the officials added. They aim to foster 'regional approach' to conflict and to change the mindsets of Pakistani leaders.
Miliband urged Pakistan to send ISI chief to India: Leak
LONDIN: The UK foreign secretary, David Miliband, and ambassador Robert Brinkley urged Pakistan to send the ISI chief to India (a proposal that later backfired), disclosed a leaked cable on UK based Guardian newspaper. After the 2008 Mumbai attacks, the US ambassador scrambled to contact key Pakistani officials and the UK embassy,
President Asif Ali Zardari said he did not believe the terrorists' boats could have been launched from Karachi.
The UK handed evidence linking the attack to Lashkar-e-Taiba to the ISI and President Zardari.
Pakistan backs US drone attacks on tribal areas: Leaks
LONDON: In a meeting Prime Minister Gilani on August 21, 2008 told US ambassador Anne W. Patterson that he don't care if they (drones) do it as long as they get the right people. The meeting was also attended by Interior Minister Rehman Malik.
The US ambassador to Pakistan met with (now president) Asif Zardari, Prime Minister Yousuf Gilani and General Ashfaq Kayani. They discuss immunity for former president Pervez Musharraf; the upcoming election and US drone attacks on the tribal areas. Although publicly the officials oppose the attacks, the meetings show they back them in private.
In a message sent on Saturday, 23 August 2008 on the subject 'IMMUNITY FOR MUSHARRAF LIKELY AFTER ZARDARI'S ELECTION AS PRESIDENT' the diplomat wrote; 'Malik suggested we hold off alleged Predator attacks until after the Bajaur operation. The PM brushed aside Rehman's remarks and said "I don't care if they do it as long as they get the right people. We'll protest in the National Assembly and then ignore it."
Pakistan asks US to move Aafia to Pak house arrest: WikiLeaks
LONDON: Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani asked the USG to consider repatriating Dr. Aafia Siddiqui on humanitarian grounds, according to US embassy cables unveiled by WikiLeaks.
He said that this was a very contentious issue in Pakistan, adding that by returning Dr. Sadiqqui "the U.S. would be in the Pakistani people's good graces."
Both Gilani and Interior Minister Rehman Malik assured Kerry that the Government of Pakistna would honor the terms of Dr. Siddiqui’s jail sentence, and suggested that she complete her jail time under house arrest. Kerry agreed to look into the prisoner transfer issue.
Pak-US ties not to get affected despite leaks: Munter 
ISLAMABAD: US Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter said that relationship between Pakistan and US will not get affected despite mass release.
Talking to media in a ceremony, held here, regarding the restoration of infrastructure in flood affected areas, Munter said that the partnership between Pakistan and US will further continue and both the countries will leave the issue of leaks behind and will strengthen their relationship.
While expressing his regret over WikiLeaks disclosures, he said that ups and downs in the past will not affect the future relationship between the two countries.US leaks reveal Pakistan nuclear, coup concerns
ISLAMABAD: Leaked memos Wednesday exposed deep tensions between the United States and Pakistan on nuclear arms safety, and revealed how the army considered forcing out a president who dreads his own assassination.
Pakistan dismissed fears that its nuclear weapons could fall to terrorists, issuing a terse statement indicative of widening international uproar over website WikiLeaks' decision to release a quarter of a million secret US cables.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani's office issued a statement after talks with US ambassador Cameron Munter, mistakenly referring to WikiLeaks twice as "vikilikes" and condemning the leaks as "misleading" and "malicious".
Foreign ministry spokesman Abdul Basit said Western concerns about nuclear weapons were "misplaced and doubtless fall in the realm of condescension".
"There has not been a single incident involving our fissile material, which clearly reflects how strong our controls and mechanisms are."
Britain's Guardian newspaper, which was given advance access to the memos released by the Internet whistleblower, said the documents showed greater US concern about Pakistan's nuclear arsenal than previously revealed publicly.
In 2009, then US ambassador Anne Patterson wrote: "Our major concern is not having an Islamic militant steal an entire weapon but rather the chance someone working in government of Pakistan facilities could gradually smuggle enough material out to eventually make a weapon."
In 2008, the year that Gilani took office, a cable warned: "Despite economic catastrophe, Pakistan is producing nuclear weapons at a faster rate than any other country in the world."
The cables cited serious concerns from the British.
They 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."
Confirming what was widely rumoured in Islamabad at the time, the documents said Pakistan's army chief mused about forcing out President Asif Ali Zardari, who the cables show has made preparations for a coup or assassination.
General Ashfaq Kayani told Patterson in March 2009 that he "might, however reluctantly," have to persuade Zardari to resign, according to one cable.
Zardari's wife, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated in 2007. He took power in 2008, returning Pakistan to civilian leadership after nearly a decade under military ruler Pervez Musharraf.
Kayani was quoted as saying that he might support Asfandyar Wali Khan, leader of the Awami National Party, as the new president thus avoiding elections that would like bring to power Zardari's arch-nemesis Nawaz Sharif.
In a secret cable from February 2009, US Vice President Joe Biden recounted how Zardari told him that Kayani and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency "will take me out".
The president reportedly made extensive plans in case he was killed, telling Patterson "he had instructed his son Bilawal to name his (Zardari's) sister, Faryal Talpur, as president".
In October 2009, a cable showed that a small US special forces team was allowed to deploy alongside Pakistani soldiers in the tribal belt, the zone on the Afghan border that Washington considers an Al-Qaeda and Taliban sanctuary.
It was only the second time such permission had been granted, the cable said. Senior cabinet ministers were also shown to support privately US drone
attacks in the tribal belt, despite huge opposition in the public at large.
Addressing US concerns of Pakistani double-dealing in Afghanistan, The New York Times said Biden asked Kayani several times in 2009 whether Pakistan and the United States "had the same enemy as we move forward".
Kayani tried to reassure him, but the Guardian said separately that hundreds of millions of dollars in American military aid earmarked for fighting Islamist militants was not used for that purpose.
Kayani reportedly said that the money, including 26 million dollars for barbed wire and 70 million dollars to defend against non-existent Taliban warplanes, had been diverted into the government's coffers.
The cables laid bare US frustrations at what officials see as Pakistan's refusal to cut off ties with extremists such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is blamed for carrying out the bloody 2008 siege of Mumbai in India.
Whistleblowing website WikiLeaks' top releases
STOCKHOLM - The around 250,000 diplomatic cables that WikiLeaks began releasing at the weekend are but one of many spotlight-grabbing document dumps in the whistleblowing website's short history.
And it will not be the last: WikiLeaks' founder and frontman Julian Assange told Forbes magazine Monday the website next planned to leak tens of thousands of documents relating to a major US bank, saying the new "magaleak" could "take down a bank or two."
Here are some of WikiLeaks' top past releases:
- November 28, 2010: In a new release dubbed "Cablegate," WikiLeaks starts publishing some 251,287 cables -- 15,652 of which are classified -- from 274 US embassies around the world. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs described those behind the leaks as "criminals, first and foremost" who had committed a "serious" offence.
- October 22, 2010: WikiLeaks publishes the so-called "Iraq war logs," described as one of the biggest military leaks of all time. The 391,832 "SIGACT" (Significant Action) reports, written by US soldiers during the war in Iraq, date from January 2004 to the end of 2009. The logs detail cases of abuse and torture and 66,081 civilian deaths of which WikiLeaks claimed 15,000 were previously unknown.
- July 25, 2010: WikiLeaks releases nearly 77,000 classified US military documents -- Pentagon files and field reports spanning from 2004 to 2010 -- on the war in Afghanistan and said it would soon publish another 15,000. The documents reveal details of civilian victims and supposed links between Pakistan and the Taliban insurgents, infuriating the Pentagon and shining the spotlight on WikiLeaks.
- April 5, 2010: WikiLeaks releases a video of a US military Apache helicopter strike in Baghdad three years ago which killed two Reuters employees and a number of other people. The gun camera footage included audio conversations between Apache pilots and ground controllers in which they identify the men in a Baghdad street as armed insurgents and ask for permission to open fire. WikiLeaks said it obtained and decrypted the video "from a number of military whistleblowers" but did not provide any further information about how it got hold of the footage.
- 2009: WikiLeaks is among the websites to publish controversial documents and email exchanges between researchers at the Climate Research Unit at Britain's University of East Anglia, one of the world's leaders in the field. The leak was seized upon by climate change sceptics who said the emails supported their cause, sparking a global row later dubbed "climategate." An inquiry later cleared the researchers of any wrongdoing.
- 2009: In November, the site begins publishing what it says are hundreds of thousands of pager messages from the day of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. WikiLeaks does not reveal how it obtained the pager messages purportedly from telecommunications companies, but technology blogs said at the time they appeared to be genuine.
- 2008: WikiLeaks posts on its website a list of more than 10,000 names -- including addresses, telephone numbers and occupations -- of members of Britain's British National Party (BNP). At least one police officer was fired as a result of the leak, as British police and prison officers were banned from joining the BNP in 2004. The party threatened legal action against whoever had published the list.
- 2008: In September, during the 2008 US presidential campaign, the content of Sarah Palin's personal email account is hacked and some email screenshots posted on WikiLeaks. The manager of the McCain-Palin campaign, Rick Davis, called the leak "a shocking invasion of the governor’s privacy and a violation of law" in a statement.
- 2007: The site publishes "Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures," a 238-page US Army instruction manual from 2003 for the prison at Guantanamo Bay. The detailed manual, which states rolls of toilet paper, among other things, could be given to detainees as rewards, was criticised by rights groups.
- 2007: WikiLeaks officially launches after being founded the year before.
Iran may have to deal with unveiled Arab 'hostility'
TEHRAN: Iranian officials have scoffed at WikiLeaks documents showing calls by Arab leaders for the destruction of Tehran's nuclear program, but analysts and observers say this unveiled hostility may indeed impact on Iran's foreign policy.
US diplomatic memos from Arab countries in the Gulf released by whistleblower WikiLeaks over the past few days uncover a fixation on the Iranian nuclear threat as well as fear that regional conflict is inevitable.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad set the official line on Monday by dismissing the documents as "worthless" and a "mischief", insisting Tehran's ties with its Arab neighbors would not be affected.
Iran's foreign ministry yesterday branded the revelations a "suspicious plot" and called on Arab neighbors across the Gulf not to fall into the whistleblower's "trap." "The enemies of the Islamic world are pursuing a project of Iranophobia and disunity," foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said.
But Ahmadinejad's reaction, which is similar to that of many other world leaders, may prove hard to sustain, several diplomats and analysts said. "The WikiLeaks documents have not unveiled anything. Iranians have long been aware of the sentiments of Arab countries in the Gulf," a Tehran-based Western diplomat said.
But having written proof that your neighbors are encouraging your enemy to attack you leaves its mark," he said. According to leaked memos, the majority of Arab leaders in the Gulf have pressed the United States to halt Iran's nuclear program, with Saudi King Abdullah calling for a US military attack to "cut off the head of the snake." The diplomat said the "timing is very bad" too as the revelations come as Tehran appeared to be on course to improve its historically strained ties with Riyadh.
In a rare move, Ahmadinejad spoke to King Abdullah by telephone twice in recent weeks on sensitive regional issues such as Lebanon and Iraq. The revelations "will not make things easy" for Iran's foreign policy, the diplomat said. Several Iranian papers have also not been as dismissive as Ahmadinejad, and carried stinging commentaries and expressed concern yesterday.
The publication of these documents heralds a worrying situation for Iran in the near future," moderate conservative daily Mellat-e Ma wrote in a commentary. "If they are authentic, Iran is facing an undeclared war by its neighbors who want a confrontation between Iran and America and see themselves as beneficiaries of that face-off," it said.
Leading reformist paper Shargh wrote "there was no need for a leak of US state department documents to see the deep hostility of many Arab countries especially the Arabian Gulf Arab states towards Iran. "But the leaked documents confirm all these speculations.
Analysts for years have warned against the deepening gap between Iran and Arabian Gulf Arab states especially their godfather Saudi Arabia," it added. Moderate English-language daily Iran News said the WikiLeaks documents highlight the risks of a conflict in the region and "how frightened the Arab world is of Iran's rising ambitions and its nuclear program.
Arabs mustn't be such stupid," read the headline in its Tuesday editorial. Iranian diplomacy may have to work to clear up misunderstandings with neighbors, acknowledged Gholam Reza Ghalandarian, director of the conservative paper Qods. "If there is an issue Iran will deal with it through direct talks," he said.
Analyst Mohammad Saleh Sedghian, director of the Arab Centre for Iranian Studies in Tehran, believed Iran has adopted a policy of appeasement. "What is interesting is the smart position taken by President Ahmadinejad when he doubted the validity of the documents and insisting on good relations with the Arabian Gulf states," he noted.
WikiLeaks faces prosecution calls as backlash mounts
PARIS: The founder of WikiLeaks faced calls for his prosecution on Tuesday as governments around the world closed ranks against the whistleblowing webist over its mass release of secret US diplomatic cables.
Japan echoed its key ally the United States in describing the leaks as "criminal" and said governments alone had the right to decide on the release of sensitive documents.
But WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange, who defended the decision to reveal some 250,000 diplomatic cables, found support from leftist governments in South America, including an offer for sanctuary as the backlash widened.
Top US diplomat Hillary Clinton arrived early Tuesday in Kazakhstan's capital Astana for a summit of the 54-member Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) which has taken on the appearance of a diplomatic damage limitation exercise.
Clinton, who earlier accused WikiLeaks of an "attack" on the US and the world, vowed to reassure dozens of allies that Washington remains a credible partner despite the massive leak of secret diplomatic cables.
"Obviously this is a matter of great concern because we don't want anyone in any of the countries that could be affected by these alleged leaks to have any doubts about our intentions, and about our commitments," she told reporters.
In an article published in several Kuwaiti newspapers, the US ambassador Deborah Jones moved to limit the damage by emphasising Washington's "strong and enduring partnership" with the desert kingdom.
Leaks showed Kuwait's interior minister did not want the US to return Kuwaiti suspects held in Guantanamo Bay and "the best thing to do is to get rid of them."
Japan's Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara told a new conference: "It's just outrageous. It's a criminal act."
US officials insisted they would pursue WikiLeaks creator Assange, an Australian believed to be living in Europe, if he is found to have violated US law.
Assange described the mass of documentation in an interview with Forbes magazine as a "diplomatic history of the United States" covering "every major issue."
Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, a long-time US critic, praised Assange while Ecuador even offered the 39-year-old sanctuary.
"We are going to invite him to come to Ecuador so he can freely present the information he possesses and all the documentation, not just over the Internet but in a variety of public forums," Kintto Lucas, Ecuador's deputy foreign minister, told the Internet site Ecuadorinmediato.
An international arrest warrant was issued in mid-November for Assange on suspicion of rape and sexual molestation of two women in Sweden.
Shahbaz 'tipped off' LeT: WikiLeaks
NEW YORK: President Asif Ali Zardari alleged that the Chief Minister Punjab Mian Shahbaz Sharif "tipped off" the banned outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) about impending UN sanctions following the 2008 Mumbai attacks, allowing the outfit to empty its bank accounts before they could be raided, US embassy cables revealed.
Six weeks after gunmen killed more than 170 people in Mumbai, President Asif Ali Zardari told the US of his "frustration" that Sharif's government in Punjab province helped the group evade new UN sanctions.
A month earlier, Shahbaz Sharif, who is chief minister of Punjab, "tipped off" the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), LeT's charity wing, "resulting in almost empty bank accounts", Zardari claimed in a conversation with the US ambassador to Islamabad, Anne Patterson.
US diplomats were unable to confirm the allegation and noted that they came at a time of rising political tension between Zardari and Sharif. But they conceded that JuD did appear to have received a warning from somewhere.
"Information from the ministry of the interior does indicate that bank accounts contained surprisingly small amounts," said the cable in January 2009. A Punjab government spokesman vigorously denied the charge.
"There's nothing true in it," said senator Pervaiz Rashid, an adviser to Sharif.
"Zardari is our political opponent and he wants to topple our government." Sharif couldn't have known about the UN sanctions, he said, because the UN coordinated its action with the federal government and not the provincial one.
Pakistan dismisses nuclear fears in leaked US cables
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Wednesday dismissed American and British fears that its nuclear weapons programme could fall into hands of terrorists as laid bare in leaked American diplomatic cables.
Memos obtained by whistleblower site WikiLeaks and reported by the Guardian and The New York Times suggested Wednesday that the United States was more concerned than it let on publicly about Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.
"Their fears are misplaced and doubtless fall in the realm of condescension," foreign office spokesman Abdul Basit said.
"There has not been a single incident involving our fissile material, which clearly reflects how strong our controls and mechanisms are.
"It is time they part with their historical biases against Pakistan," Basit said, referring to Britain and the United States. WikiLeaks: US was worried about Sarkozy after divorce
PARIS: US diplomats were worried in 2007 that French President Nicolas Sarkozy's divorce from his then wife Cecilia had left their ally more irritable and unpredictable, a leaked cable showed Wednesday.
"On permanent overdrive and intense in the best of times, Sarkozy's recent divorce raises questions about his ability to maintain his equilibrium and focus," the US embassy in Paris wrote in an October 2007 cable.
The leaked cable is part of a vast trove of stolen US State Department memos that are this week being published by the activist website WikiLeaks and a team of international dailies, in this case Britain's Guardian newspaper.
"Sarkozy has himself spoken of his dependence on Cecilia -- 'my source of strength and my Achilles heel,' as he put it," the indiscreet cable said.
"During their separation in 2005, a highly irritable, darker Sarkozy came into view -- the same one that reappeared at the Lisbon Summit the day after the announcement of the divorce," it continued.
"How much Cecilia really anchored him, personally and politically, should soon become evident, but we are betting on Sarkozy's ability to bounce back."
Interpol warrant for WikiLeaks chief as chaos spreads
WASHINGTON: Interpol on Wednesday issued a global arrest warrant for the shadowy founder of WikiLeaks, as the chaos from its massive dump of secret US cables spread from governments to financial markets.
The United States suspended the military's access to some sensitive US diplomatic correspondence in a bid to stop new leaks, as the leaders of France and Pakistan were the latest to be stung by cables obtained by the website.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, a 39-year-old Australian computer hacker, is wanted in Sweden for questioning over the alleged rape and molestation of two women. Assange has denied the charges.
Interpol, which is based in Lyon, France, said early Wednesday local time that it had alerted all member states to arrest Assange if he is spotted. He spends much of his time in Britain and Sweden.
Assange is said to lead a spy-like life of rarely sleeping in the same place twice. Ecuador's left-leaning government initially offered Assange residency, but President Rafael Correa backtracked Tuesday.
Assange told a magazine that the bank leak would "give a true and representative insight into how banks behave at the executive level in a way that will stimulate investigations and reforms, I presume."
In another interview conducted from an undisclosed location over Internet phone, Assange told a magazine that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should resign over a cable that appeared to show the United States ordered diplomats to spy on foreign officials, particularly at the United Nations.
State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said that Clinton did not draft the document and that her name was affixed systematically to many cables out of Washington.
Crowley said the State Department had temporarily suspended the Pentagon's access to some of its correspondence, halting a trend to greater information sharing within the US government launched after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Zardari worried military may take him out: WikiLeaks
WASHINGTON: Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari told US Vice President Joe Biden that he was worried the powerful military in his country might 'take me out,' according to US diplomatic cables published in US and British newspapers on Tuesday.
Zardari's comments reflect the influential role the Pakistani military holds in a country with a long history of coup d'etats, and further raises questions about the effectiveness of civilian rule. It was unclear whether Zardari's comments suggested he could be killed or merely forced out of office.
The US cables from the embassy in Islamabad were part of a massive cache of internal American diplomatic correspondence acquired by WikiLeaks and distributed to a handful of news organizations, including Indian, British, German and US newspapers and in France and Spain too.
More than 250,000 documents were being released this week despite the strong objections of the US government, which considers them stolen and says their public release undermines international diplomacy.
The cables underscore the difficult relationship between the United States and Pakistan and US skepticism about whether Islamabad is fully committed to defeating Islamic extremism despite billions of of dollars in annual military and civilian aid.
COAS Kayani mused takeover: leaked cables
WASHINGTON: Pakistan's army chief COAS Kayani mused about forcing out civilian President Asif Ali Zardari who has made preparations for a coup or assassination, leaked US diplomatic cables said Tuesday.
The latest tranche of memos, obtained by whistleblower site WikiLeaks and reported by American and British newspapers, also showed that the United States was more concerned than it let on publicly about Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.
General Ashfaq Kayani, chief of Pakistan's powerful military, told the US ambassador during a March 2009 meeting that he "might, however reluctantly," pressure Zardari to resign, according to cable cited by the papers.
Kayani was quoted as saying that he might support Asfandyar Wali Khan, leader of the Awami National League Party, as the new president -- not Zardari's arch-nemesis Nawaz Sharif.
In another cable quoted by both newspapers, US Vice President Joe Biden recounted to Britain's then prime minister Gordon Brown a conversation with Zardari last year.
Zardari told him that Kayani and the Inter-Services Intelligence agency "will take me out," according to the cable. The paper said the cables also showed that Zardari has made extensive preparations in case he is killed.
Tensions between Zardari and the army are no secret, and Pakistan often witnesses coup rumors.
After Kayani met in September with Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, the now-exiled Musharraf quipped: "I can assure you they were not discussing the weather."
Effect of WikiLeaks on US fairly modest: Gates
WASHINGTON: Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Tuesday said the massive leak of secret diplomatic cables was embarrassing but would have only "modest" consequences for US foreign policy.
"Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for US foreign policy, I think fairly modest," Gates told reporters.
Gates, a former CIA director and intelligence analyst, said some reactions to the WikiLeaks website's disclosure of State Department cables were "significantly overwrought."
Other countries know that the United States government "leaks like a sieve" and this week's massive disclosure of classified files would not seriously derail Washington's diplomatic relations, he said.
"The fact is governments deal with the United States because it's in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us and not because they believe we can keep secrets," he said.
WikiLeaks cables reflect US point of view: Gulf officials
DUBAI: Emirati and Bahraini officials dismissed on Tuesday the WikiLeaks documents revealing the hostility of Arab Gulf states towards Iran as reflecting "an American point of view."
"The leaks reflect, originally, an American point of view," United Arab Emirates Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Mohammad Gargash told reporters when asked to comment on the WikiLeaks documents.
"Several memos were taken out of context and did not take into consideration the events that surrounded certain meetings," Gargash said.
Bahraini Foreign Minister Sheikh Khaled bin Ahmed al-Khalifa echoed him in statements carried by the official BNA news agency in Manama.
The leaked documents "reflect the analyses of US officials and their evaluation of meetings with leaders and officials in the region," he said.
US diplomatic cables from Arab countries in the Gulf released by WikiLeaks uncovered a fixation on the Iranian threat as well as fear that conflict is inevitable.
Saudi King Abdullah has repeatedly pressed the United States to attack Iran to halt its nuclear programme, saying Washington should "cut off the head of the snake," according to an April 2008 memo.
Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed as early as 2005 expressed support for military action against Iran, according to the leaked documents.
"I believe this guy is going to take us into war," he said in 2006 of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
"Al-Qaeda is not going to get a nuclear bomb; Iran is a matter of time," he said in 2009.
On the other hand, Dubai's ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum is not in favour of military action, worrying about the "dire" consequences for the region, according to two 2007 memos.
Speaking of Iran's nuclear programme, King Hamad of Bahrain told US General David Petraeus in November 2009: "That programme must be stopped ... The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it."
Saudi Arabia said on Monday it was "not concerned" by the revelations.
"These documents do not concern the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Nor has the kingdom had any role in producing them," foreign ministry spokesman Osama Nugali told AFP.
NA body terms Wikileaks reports a plot to harm Muslism countries ties
ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly Standing Committee on Information and Broadcasting on Tuesday termed the release of Wikileaks reports as a conspiracy to harm relations among the Muslim countries.
"Wikileaks' aim behind the release of the reports is just to disturb the relations between the Muslim countries" noted all the members of the NA committee at a meeting, which was held in the parliament House under the chairmanship of Belum Hasnain, MNA.
Nato slams 'illegal, irresponsible and dangerous' WikiLeaks
BRUSSELS: Nato slammed Tuesday the release of confidential US files as "illegal, irresponsible and dangerous," spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said.
"As a matter of policy we won't comment on classified information and we strongly condemn the leaking of confidential documents," Longescu insisted.
However, "it is illegal, irresponsible and dangerous, regardless of whether the leaked material is diplomatic or military," she underlined.
Sensitive US diplomatic cables placed on the Internet by WikiLeaks show that most of the 200 US nuclear bombs still left in Europe are located in Nato member countries Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Turkey.
While these countries have raised the issue of disarmament, the precise location of these tactical bombs had not been made official prior to the latest leaks.
In the text files, a top Berlin official is logged as having told US counterparts it "made no sense to unilaterally withdraw 'the 20' tactical nuclear weapons still in Germany while Russia maintains 'thousands' of them."
He added that a "withdrawal of nuclear weapons from Germany and perhaps from Belgium and the Netherlands could make it very difficult politically for Turkey to maintain its own stockpile."
WikiLeaks at the weekend began releasing around 250,000 cables, after two other leaks this year involving hundreds of thousands of classified files on the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The whistleblowing site's Australian founder Julian Assange on Tuesday appealed to Sweden's Supreme Court to overturn a ruling he should be detained for questioning on allegations of rape.
Turkish FM pokes fun at description of him as dangerous
WASHINGTON: Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu poked fun Tuesday at a leaked US memo's description of him as "exceptionally dangerous," saying he sees only a smiling face in the mirror.
Speaking to reporters, Davutoglu also denied suggestions in other cables leaked by the Internet whistle-blower WikiLeaks that his government is anti-Israeli with fantasies of reviving the Ottoman empire.
"Yes, I'm extremely dangerous for those who want to have instability in our region. I'm extremely dangerous for those who want to create new tensions," Davutoglu told a press roundtable in a Washington hotel.
"If somebody says to me 'extremely dangerous,' I look to mirror, I don't see any dangerous face. (I see) a smiling face," he said.
A high-ranking government adviser, quoted by US diplomats in a cable published by the German magazine Der Spiegel, describes Davutoglu as "exceptionally dangerous" and warns that he would use his influence on Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.
A cable signed by the US ambassador in January 2010 says the foreign minister wants to reassert on the Balkans the influence the Ottoman empire used to exert on the region.
But Davutoglu said: "We don't want to have anything back to history."
"All the countries, regardless of their size, or population or influence, are equal in our foreign policy. There is no hegemonic or imperial type of ambition."
He said neither he, nor the prime minister or other leaders used the concept of a revived Ottoman empire in their policy discussions.
The Turkish foreign minister also sought to shoot down any perception from the leaked cables that his government was somehow anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic, citing "excellent relations" with Jews throughout Turkish history.
He said tensions in the relationship with Israel were due to Israeli policies, which he called "irresponsible" when they resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians.
He cited the Israeli offensive into the Gaza Strip in December 2008 and January 2009, where the majority killed were civilians.
He also cited a May 31 Israeli commando raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship which killed nine Turks aboard, including one with dual US-Turkish citizenship.
He insisted it is "usual" practice among friends under such circumstances for Israel to apologize and offer compensation to the families of the victims.
"If we are enemies, of course, we have to know. If we are friends and we continue to be friends, this is the way to resolve it," he added.
A leaked US diplomatic cable dated October 2009 reports the view of the Israeli ambassador to Turkey, Gabby Levy, that Erdogan "simply hates Israel" on religious grounds. Other conversations backed up the view, it added. WikiLeaks says it is under new cyber attack
STOCKHOLM: WikiLeaks said in a Twitter message Tuesday that it was under a new cyber attack after a similar incident at the weekend just before the website began releasing secret US diplomatic cables.
"We are currently under another DDoS attack," WikiLeaks said on its official Twitter feed.
DDoS stands for distributed denial of service. Classic DDoS attacks occur when legions of "zombie" computers, normally machines infected with viruses, are commanded to simultaneously visit a website.
Such a massive onslaught can overwhelm servers, slowing service or knocking it offline completely.
A later message on the WikiLeaks twitter said "DDoS attack now exceeding 10 Gigabits a second."
On Sunday, just as it began the release of some 250,000 US embassy cables, WikiLeaks said on Twitter the website had come under a DDoS cyber attack.
But it insisted El Pais, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, The Guardian and the New York Times would go ahead with the publication of the first of such documents even if the WikiLeaks website was down. WikiLeaks under new pressure on cable dump
WASHINGTON: WikiLeaks came under intense pressure Tuesday after its mass dump of sensitive US documents, with China demanding action, the website facing cyber attack and a defector announcing a rival site.
Two days after the whistle-blower website began releasing a trove of files, signs emerged that more damaging disclosures were on the way with officials saying WikiLeaks had thousands of cables on the sensitive US role in Taiwan.
China warned against "any disturbance to China-US relations" after leaked cables indicated that Beijing was frustrated with longtime ally North Korea and may accept its collapse and absorption by the US-backed South.
"We hope the US side will properly handle relevant issues," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said of the documents, which were released amid high tensions on the Korean peninsula.
WikiLeaks, led by shadowy Australian hacker Julian Assange, said it obtained 250,000 US cables -- in which US diplomats relay conversations and observations that are usually withheld from public view for decades.
Allegations from the 250,000 cables include that Iran's supreme leader has cancer and will die "within months" and that Saudi King Abdullah urged the US to attack Iran and "cut off the head of the snake" over its nuclear program.
WikiLeaks said Tuesday that it had come under cyber attack for the second time this week, although the website could be accessed from Washington mid-Tuesday.
In a Twitter message, WikiLeaks said it was under a DDoS, or distributed denial of service, attack in which legions of "zombie" computers, normally infected with viruses, are commanded to simultaneously visit a website.
WikiLeaks' disclosures have enraged the US government, which says that the cables' release undermines the ability to converse with foreign officials and could put US personnel and their sources at risk.
NATO, the trans-Atlantic alliance, joined the United States on Tuesday, with spokeswoman Oana Lungescu saying "we strongly condemn the leaking of confidential documents."
"It is illegal, irresponsible and dangerous, regardless of whether the leaked material is diplomatic or military," she said.
Assange has also faced criticism within the ragtag WikiLeaks ranks for what some associates call a top-down style. Assange is under an international arrest warrant for questioning about rape allegations in Sweden.
In Iceland, former WikiLeaks member 25-year-old student Herbert Snorrason said that he and others planned to create an alternative whistle-blower site.
"We broke from WikiLeaks because a few ex-WikiLeaks members had been very unhappy with the way Assange was conducting things," Snorrason told AFP in Reykjavik.
Nonetheless, Snorrason insisted the project was "not a personal attack." He said the new project will be a "a safe haven where people can share information anonymously," unlike WikiLeaks which dumps documents onto its site.
WikiLeaks and US authorities have not explained how the massive security breach transpired. But suspicion has fallen on Bradley Manning, a disgruntled 23-year-old ex-Army intelligence officer.
Manning was arrested in May after WikiLeaks released a video showing a 2007 US Apache helicopter strike in Baghdad that killed civilian reporters.
Some of the most damaging disclosures may be still to come. WikiLeaks said it obtained 3,456 cables from the American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto embassy in Taipei since the United States switched recognition to Beijing in 1979.
The US relationship with Taiwan is highly sensitive. US administrations tell Beijing that they provide the island with weapons for self-defense in line with US law but do not support Taiwan's independence.
Taiwanese legislator Lin Yu-fang warned that he feared the documents, if released, "may cause misunderstanding and even negative impacts on bilateral ties."
WikiLeaks, however, won praise from Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, even though he was described as "crazy" by a French diplomat in a cable. Ecuador even offered Assange sanctuary.
But another US nemesis, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, denounced WikiLeaks as "worthless" and "mischief."
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu poked fun at a leaked memo's description of him as "exceptionally dangerous," saying that he sees only a smiling face in the mirror.
Officials in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain said the memos reflected "an American point of view" of conversations. The cables quoted leaders of Gulf Arab monarchies as being fixated on a threat from Iran.
No guarantee against another leak: Pentagon
WASHINGTON: The Pentagon has taken steps to prevent more disclosures but there is no guarantee against more damaging leaks after WikiLeaks published a huge trove of classified diplomatic cables, a spokesman said Monday.
Colonel Dave Lapan told reporters that the Defense Department had tightened procedures for handling sensitive information but he did not expect changes to rules on who is permitted access to secret documents.
The WikiLeaks website, which posted more than 250,000 classified documents on Sunday full of embarrassing details of diplomatic exchanges, has never revealed its source in a series of document dumps but suspicion has focused on a US Army private working in military intelligence, Bradley Manning, who is now under detention.
Given Manning's low rank, the Pentagon has faced questions over how it handles security clearances and secret information. But Lapan said the military was trying to achieve a "balance between security and information-sharing."
"Remember in the aftermath of 9/11, one of the major criticisms was that we had stovepipes and information wasn't being shared," he said.
"Only so many procedures can be put into place. Ultimately it's the responsibility of individuals to follow those."
The Defense Department on Sunday announced a series of measures to crack down on potential leaks, which included disabling all write capability for removable media on classified computers, restricting transfers of information from classified to unclassified systems and better monitoring of suspicious computer activity using similar tactics employed by credit card companies.
"It is impossible to know under what circumstances someone might be able to defeat the systems that are in place," Lapan said.
"So I couldn't guarantee that it (another leak) wouldn't happen, but the safeguards and procedures being put into place certainly lessen that chance."
Bush bashes WikiLeaks as he pushes memoir online
SAN FRANCISCO: Former US president George W. Bush bashed WikiLeaks on Monday in a wide-ranging chat streamed live online at Facebook as part of a promotion tour for his memoir "Decision Points."
Bush touched on topics ranging from war in Iraq and relations with China to moments with Russian leader Vladimir Putin and his beloved Texas baseball team being trounced by San Francisco in a recent US championship series.
The 64-year-old former US president was interviewed by Facebook's young founder Mark Zuckerberg and Bush administration attorney Ted Ullyot, now general counsel at the world's top online social networking service.
When asked his reaction to whistle-blower website WikiLeaks releasing an avalanche of diplomatic memos during the weekend, Bush condemned the move.
"Leaks are very damaging and people who leak ought to be prosecuted," Bush said. "I was frustrated to know that there are people who did not honor their agreement with the government not to talk about secrets."
Leaks that expose behind-the-scenes comments or conversations sabotage trust that is essential for national leaders to work together, he added.
"When you have a conversation with a foreign leader and it ends up in the newspapers they are not going to like it," Bush said. "I didn't like it."
Bush said he has happily avoided the spotlight since his departure from the White House but needed to step back into the public eye to promote his memoir.
China would accept united Korea: US documents
WASHINGTON: China, long viewed as the protector of North Korea, is ready to accept the unification of the peninsula after a collapse of the regime, according to US documents leaked on Monday.
Over an expansive dinner last year, the Chinese ambassador to Kazakhstan revealed that Beijing considers North Korea's nuclear program to be "very troublesome," according to a memo obtained by whistleblower site WikiLeaks.
Ambassador Cheng Guoping "said China hopes for peaceful reunification in the long-term, but he expects the two countries to remain separate in the short-term," said the leaked cable by US Ambassador Richard Hoagland and reprinted by a British newspaper.
In a separate cable, South Korea's then vice foreign minister Chun Yung-Woo said that China "had far less influence on North Korea than most people believed."
"Beijing had 'no will' to use its economic leverage to force a change in Pyongyang's policies and the DPRK leadership knows it," he said, referring to the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Chun also said that South Korea believed that North Korea "had already collapsed economically" and would "collapse politically" two to three years after the death of leader Kim Jong-Il.
Kim, who is now embroiled in tensions with the South, is believed to be preparing to hand over power to his son Kim Jong-Un, who is in his 20s.
Iran supreme leader has terminal cancer: WikiLeaks
LONDON: Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has terminal cancer and could be dead "within months," according to a US document released by WikiLeaks and published by a British newspaper.
The memo, sent from the US consulate in Istanbul, quotes a businessman with close links to former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani as saying that Khamenei had been diagnosed with a rare form of Leukaemia.
"Khamenei is likely to die within a matter of months," the August 2009 memo, revealed by the whistle-blowing website, said.
"As a result, Rafsanjani has stopped campaigning within the Assembly of Experts to challenge Khamenei, and now is focused on 'letting nature take its course'," it said.
China 'scared to death' of Pelosi: leaked cable
WASHINGTON: China was "scared to death" over a visit by US Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is outspoken on human rights, and rejected her request to visit to Tibet, according to files leaked Monday.
A top diplomat at the US embassy in Beijing said he asked China to consider letting Pelosi go to Tibet during her May 2009 visit to China, according to a cable obtained by whistleblower site WikiLeaks.
Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei responded that China could not arrange the trip due to Pelosi's "tight schedule," according to the cable reprinted by Britain's Guardian newspaper.
The Chinese ambassador in Kazakhstan was blunter, telling his US counterpart over an expansive dinner that Beijing was "fearful" over Pelosi's visit.
"She had the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) scared to death on the eve of her visit," Ambassador Cheng Guoping was quoted as saying in the classified memo by US Ambassador Richard Hoagland.
Pelosi, whose congressional district includes San Francisco's Chinatown, is a vocal supporter of Chinese democracy activists and Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.
Her visit last year came just a week before the 20th anniversary of China's crackdown on student protests in Tiananmen Square. On a previous trip, Pelosi unfurled a banner in Tiananmen Square in remembrance of those killed.
Aus, Canada, Iraq condemn Wikileaks
NEW YORK: Australia, Canada and Iraq have voiced grave condemnation against issuance of classified documents by whistleblower site WikiLeaks; UN and South Korea have, however, opted to stay quiet over the issue.
Meanwhile, India has resorted to carefulness in this connection. Australian Attorney General has termed the disclosure of the secret information regarding foreign policy of United States as ‘against US’s national interests’.
Also, he voiced Australian support for US’s legal pursuance against WikiLeaks.
Canadian Foreign Minister has said that revelation of the classified papers by WikiLeaks is an irresponsible act and a threat to US sovereignty.
He said these revelations are condemnable and cannot serve good to any country.
Clinton terms leaks ‘attack on US foreign policy’WASHINGTON: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Monday the United States "deeply regrets" the release by WikiLeaks of confidential US documents, as she sought to reassure American allies.
In a statement, Hillary called the document leak an attack on America's foreign policy and the international community.
"I will not comment on or confirm what are alleged to be stolen State Department cables," Clinton said, referring to some 250,000 documents being released by the whistleblowing website.
"But I can say that the United States deeply regrets the disclosure of any information that was intended to be confidential, including private discussions between counterparts or our diplomats' personal assessments and observations.
"I want to make clear that our official foreign policy is not set through these messages, but here in Washington," the top US diplomat added. "Our policy is a matter of public record as reflected in our statements and our actions around the world.
"I would also add that to the American people and to our friends and partners, I want you to know that we are taking aggressive steps to hold responsible those who stole this information," she said.
Zardari ‘dirty’, Nawaz ‘dangerous’: PrinceKARACHI: WikiLeaks diplomatic cables have revealed that the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi had described President Asif Ali Zardari as ‘dirty’ but ‘not dangerous’ and Nawaz Sharif as ‘dangerous’ but ‘not dirty’.
Pakistan’s Foreign Office Monday condemned the "irresponsible disclosure of sensitive official documents" and denied that the reactor produces highly enriched uranium, but said the US suggestion to have fuel transferred was "plainly refused".
"Pakistan is an advanced nuclear technology state. No one can touch Pakistan's nuclear facilities and assets," said the foreign ministry.
"Reports concerning Pakistan's experimental nuclear reactor acknowledge that Pakistan did not allow any transfer of the fuel from the experimental reactor."
The ministry said the reactor was installed in the mid-1960s with support from the United States, which also initially provided the fuel.
"The suggestion that the reactor is producing HEU (highly enriched uranium) is completely incorrect," it said.
Pakistan also rejected scathing comments attributed to King Abdullah calling President Asif Ali Zardari the greatest obstacle to progress in Pakistan.
"When the head is rotten it affects the whole body," King Abdullah was quoted as saying by the New York Times.
President Zardari’s spokesman on Monday dismissed the reported insult from one of Pakistan's closest allies, saying Zardari considers King Abdullah "his elder brother". "The so-called leaks are no more than an attempt to create misperceptions between two important and brotherly Muslim countries," said Farhatullah Babar.
The country's nuclear arsenal is one of the most sensitive topics for the United States as it tries to improve relations with the conservative Muslim nation on the front line in the campaign against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Parts of Pakistan's northwest is gripped by a homegrown Taliban insurgency. Its semi-autonomous wild border area with Afghanistan is subject to a covert US drone war targeting Taliban and Al-Qaeda leaders.
Islamist militants embarked on a nationwide bombing campaign in 2007, the same year that the Times said the US began attempts to safeguard Pakistan's enriched uranium. A quarter of a million confidential American diplomatic cables are being released by whistleblower WikiLeaks from Monday.
The New York Times, Britain's the Guardian, Germany's Der Spiegel, France's Le Monde and Spain's El Pais has published a first batch of the documents.
The Times quoted then US ambassador Anne Patterson as saying in May 2009 that Pakistan was refusing to schedule a visit by American technical experts.
A Pakistani official, who declined to be named, said: "If the local media got word of the fuel removal, they certainly would portray it as the United States taking Pakistan's nuclear weapons".
Islamabad has been adamant that its nuclear weapons are in safe hands and US President Barack Obama has publicly agreed.
Pakistan announced that it had nuclear weapons in 1998, scrambling to secure the technology after India's first nuclear test in 1974. Experts now estimate that Pakistan has up to 100 nuclear weapons.
The United States has longstanding concerns about proliferation from Pakistan and is reported to have set up an elite squad that could fly into the country and attempt to secure its weapons should the government disintegrate.
In 2004, Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's bomb, confessed to running a nuclear black market that sent secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea. He was put under house arrest for five years.
Although he retracted his remarks, US officials say he is still a risk.
Pakistan also opposes a proposed Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, which would limit access to highly enriched uranium and plutonium used to make weapons.
Pak terms WikiLeaks report as misleading
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Monday said it considered the "extremely negative reports" carried on Pakistan-Saudi relations attributed to WikiLeaks as "misleading and contrary to facts".
"It is quite evident that these mischievous reports reveal the utter inadequacy of the author to grasp the essence of the Pakistan-Saudi relationship," Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit responded to the WikiLeaks documents that revealed on Sunday.
The spokesman said Pakistan enjoys a very special and unique relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, adding that Pakistani leadership, government and the people held the leadership and the people of Saudi Arabia not only in very high esteem but as true friends and brothers.
He mentioned that Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz, the Royal family and the people of Saudi Arabia always stood by Pakistan. Basit said the national and international press carried excerpts from documents brought to public light by WikiLeaks, and said these documents reportedly pertained to official communications within the US government system.
He said the U.S had alerted Pakistan to the unauthorized leaks. "Since these leaks are in the public domain, we would obviously look at these closely with a view to ensuring that Pakistan's national interest is not compromised in any manner. However, we are not in the position to comment on the veracity of U.S internal documents."
The spokesman said Pakistan was an advanced nuclear technology state and no one could touch Pakistan's nuclear facilities and assets. He said the reports concerning Pakistan's experimental nuclear reactor acknowledged that Pakistan did not allow any transfer of the fuel from the experimental reactor.
He said this experimental reactor was installed in the mid-60s with the support of the United States (U.S) which also initially provided the fuel for this facility. The U.S suggestion to have the fuel transferred was plainly refused by Pakistan.
He said the suggestion that the reactor was producing highly enriched uranium was completely incorrect.
Pakistan condemns WikiLeaks revelations 
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan termed uncovering of sensitive documents by WikiLeaks as irresponsible behavior, Geo News reported Monday.Reacting to the WikiLeaks cables issued recently on matters from around the world, Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit said Pakistan is taking stock of the revelations concerning Pakistan.
The spokesman said the irresponsible issuance of sensitive documents regarding foreign and defence affairs is a 'condemnable act'.
The FO spokesman Abdul Basit said the US had already informed Pakistan about these reports before they were issued.
Erdogan 'hates' Israel: US cables
ANKARA: Turkey's Islamist-rooted prime minister "simply hates Israel" on religious grounds, US cables released by WikiLeaks say, reflecting growing US misgivings over Ankara's foreign policy. The scathing assessment comes in a memo on a conversation with Israeli ambassador to Turkey, Gabby Levy, about Recep Tayyip Erdogan's frequent outbursts against Israel following the Jewish state's devastating war on the Gaza Strip last year.
"Our discussions with contacts both inside and outside of the Turkish government... tend to confirm Levy's thesis that Erdogan simply hates Israel," the cable said.
Levy reportedly dismissed domestic political calculations as the motive behind Erdogan's hostility, and instead attributed it to the prime minister's Islamist background.
"He's a fundamentalist. He hates us religiously and his hatred is spreading," Levy was quoted as saying.
The cable concluded that Erdogan's "antipathy towards Israel is a factor" in his policy on Iran's nuclear programme and other Middle East issues.
It was dated October 2009, before Turkish-Israeli ties plunged into a full-blown crisis on May 31 when Israeli forces killed nine Turks on a Gaza-bound aid ship.
Shortly afterwards, NATO's sole Muslim-majority member voted "no" to fresh sanctions against Iran, adopted at the UN Security Council, insisting that a nuclear fuel swap deal it hammered out with Tehran, together with Brazil, should be given a chance.
Another cable, dated November 2009, said Washington was "wondering if it could any longer count on Turkey to help contain Iran's profound challenge to regional peace."
According to other papers, Erdogan lacks "vision" and "analytic depth", reads "minimally", ignores foreign ministry expertise and is guided by an "iron ring of sycophantic (but contemptuous) advisors... which partially explains... his susceptibility to Islamist theories."
He is said to rely on "his charisma, instincts, and the filterings of advisors who pull conspiracy theories off the Web or are lost in neo-Ottoman Islamist fantasies, e.g., Islamist foreign policy advisor... Ahmet Davutoglu."
Davutoglu, foreign minister since May 2009, met Monday with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as part of a previously scheduled visit to Washington.
The cables portray Erdogan's advisors and Davutoglu as having little understanding of politics beyond Turkey.
Turkish Defence Minister Vecdi Gonul, quoted by US diplomats, describes Davutoglu as "exceptionally dangerous."
Despite his bragging, Erdogan is afraid of losing power, according to the dispatches, and one source is quoted as saying that, "Tayyip believes in God but doesn't trust Him."
A cable signed by the US ambassador in January 2010 says Davutoglu wants to reassert on the Balkans the influence the Ottoman empire used to exert on the region.
But the foreign minister overestimates himself and Turkey, wrote the US diplomats, saying the country was "with Rolls Royce ambitions but Rover resources."
Another memo reported Israeli claims that Ankara allowed supplies for Iran's nuclear programme to be shipped across its territory.
Speaking in October 2009 after a meeting with Israeli counterparts, a French diplomat tells the Americans of "profound disquiet among the Israelis about Turkey."
"He reported that the Israelis claimed the Turks have allowed weapons-related material for Iran's nuclear program to transit Turkey, with Prime Minister Erdogan's full knowledge," the memo said.
"The French replied that Israel would need to have clear and concrete proof of such activity before leveling accusations. The Israelis replied that they are collecting evidence which they will eventually publicize."
Turkish FM to discuss leaked cables with Clinton
WASHINGTON: Turkey's foreign minister entered talks Monday with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, saying they would discuss thousands of leaked US diplomatic cables, many of which originated in Ankara. Ahmet Davutoglu said he would address "a huge variety of agenda items" in his long-scheduled talks with Clinton at the State Department, "including the leaked documents" posted online by whistleblower website Wikileaks and a select group of media outlets.
Key regional US ally Turkey is in the spotlight in the wake of the latest Wikileaks dump of more than a quarter million documents, including thousands of cables from the US embassy in Ankara.
One cable dated November 2009 said Washington was "wondering if it could any longer count on Turkey to help contain Iran's profound challenge to regional peace." Davutoglu, with Clinton at his side, said Turkey maintained a "strategic partnership" with Washington -- comments echoed by the top US diplomat.
"Turkey and the United States have one of the most important bilatral relationships in the world," Clinton told reporters.
"We are very committed to continuing to strengthen and deepen that relationship, and it is always very constructive for me to meet with the foreign minister because we have so much that needs to be done that only Turkey and the United States can do together."
Davutoglu stressed that Ankara maintained a "principled... time-tested transparent foreign policy, including our relationship with the US.
"And we will follow the same principled foreign policy to achieve regional and global peace in coordination with the American administration."
Clinton, who entered the closed-door talks without taking any questions from reporters, described Davutoglu as a "colleague and a friend" with whom she has worked closely over the last 22 months of President Barack Obama's administration.
But the bilateral relationship is sure to be tested in the fallout of the leak of US documents which included sensitive and blunt assessments of Turkish leaders including Davutoglu: German news magazine Der Spiegel, among the publications that posted the documents, highlighted cables in which US diplomats questioned Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's dependability as a partner, and how he has surrounded himself with "an iron ring of sycophantic (but contemptuous) advisors."
Davutoglu in one cable is portrayed as having little understanding of politics beyond Turkey.
A high-ranking government adviser, quoted by US diplomats, describes Davutoglu as "exceptionally dangerous" and warns that he would use his Islamist influence on Erdogan.
WikiLeaks prompts US crackdown on classified info
WASHINGTON: The United States cracked down Monday on the handling of classified information in response to the release of hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables by the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks.
The Office of Management and Budget ordered a sweeping review of information security across federal agencies, saying the inflammatory and sometimes embarrassing revelations in the leaked documents had damaged national security.
"The recent irresponsible disclosure by WikiLeaks has resulted in significant damage to our national security," Director Jacob Lew said. "Any failure by agencies to safeguard classified information... is unacceptable and will not be tolerated."
Dangerous US standoff with Pakistan over nuclear fuel: leaksISLAMABAD: For years the United States has led top secret efforts to remove highly enriched uranium from Pakistan, worried it could be used to make an illicit nuclear device, according to leaked US cables.
The New York Times said the documents, part of quarter of a million confidential American diplomatic cables released by Internet whistleblower Wikileaks, showed that the effort had so far proved unsuccessful.
Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is one of the most sensitive topics for the United States as it tries to improve relations with its frontline ally in the campaign against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Militants embarked on a nationwide bombing campaign across Pakistan in 2007, the same year that the Times said the secret efforts began.
In May 2009, it quoted then US ambassador Anne Patterson as saying that Pakistan was refusing to schedule a visit by American technical experts.
The Times attributed the reason to a nameless Pakistani official who said: "If the local media got word of the fuel removal, 'they certainly would portray it as the United States taking Pakistan's nuclear weapons'".
Islamabad has been adamant that its nuclear weapons are in safe hands and US President Barack Obama has publicly concurred.
But the Times said the leaked documents showed the United States trying to remove the uranium from a research reactor, fearing it could be diverted for use in an "illicit nuclear device".
Israel tried to coordinate Gaza war with Abbas, Cairo: leaks
JERUSALEM: Israel discussed its planned war on Gaza with the Palestinian leadership and Egypt ahead of time, offering to hand them control of the strip if it defeated Hamas, US documents released by WikiLeaks showed.
The attempt to coordinate its devastating offensive against Gaza's Islamist rulers was revealed by Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak whose remarks were included in a telegram sent in June 2009 by then deputy US ambassador Luis Moreno.
"He explained that the GOI (government of Israel) had consulted with Egypt and Fatah prior to Operation Cast Lead, asking if they were willing to assume control of Gaza once Israel defeated Hamas," he said, referring to the Fatah party of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.
"Not surprisingly, Barak said, the GOI received negative answers from both," it said.
Israel launched its massive offensive, dubbed "Operation Cast Lead," on December 27, 2008 with the stated aim of halting rocket attacks from Gaza.
During the 22-day war, some 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed in the fighting. Thirteen Israelis were also killed, 10 of them soldiers.
Barak also "stressed the importance of continued consultations with both Egypt and Fatah," over reconstruction of the tiny coastal enclave which was devastated by the operation.
The Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas have long been bitter rivals, but their divisions came to a head in June 2007 when Hamas drove its Fatah rivals out of the Gaza Strip and seized control of the impoverished territory.
Australia vows to back any US legal action against WikiLeaks SYDNEY: Australia said Monday it would support the United States in any legal action against WikiLeaks, as the whistleblower site founded by Australian Julian Assange released thousands of sensitive US cables.
Attorney-General Robert McClelland said WikiLeak's publication of diplomatic US memos could harm the national security interests of the US and its allies, including Australia, as well as "prejudice the safety" of those they discussed.
"Australia will support any law enforcement action that may be taken, the US will be the lead government in that respect, but certainly Australian agencies will assist," McClelland told reporters in Canberra.
Asked whether WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange was Australia's most wanted man, McClelland said: "The United States authorities are looking at law enforcement actions as the lead country, and we are providing every assistance and could be expected to provide every assistance."
McClelland said he received no request to cancel the passport of Assange, who has said that more than a quarter of a million diplomatic cables relating to "every major issue" in the world will be released in the latest data dump.
But the attorney-general said he had asked Australian Federal Police to investigate whether the publication of the documents -- one of which describes Australia as a "rock solid" but unimposing ally -- broke any local laws.
"From Australia's point of view we think there are potentially a number of criminal laws that could have been breached by ... the release of this information," McClelland said.
"The Australian Federal Police are looking at that, clearly I don't want to pre-empt the outcome of that advice."
McClelland said the latest WikiLeaks release, which follows that of tens of thousands of US military files relating to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, would also be examined by a government taskforce.
The diplomatic cables will include hundreds sent by US officials in Australia, but their full content is as yet unknown.
Berlusconi laughs off criticism in leaked US documents
ROME: Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi laughed off criticism of his playboy lifestyle in diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks Sunday, but an opposition party said it further discredited Italy.
Berlusconi had "had a good laugh" at a damning assessment of his "ineffective" leadership, his partying lifestyle and his close links with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, sources told Italy's ANSA news agency.
Britain's newspaper The Guardian had reported that Elizabeth Dibble, US charge d'affaires in Rome, described Berlusconi to be "feckless, vain, and ineffective as a modern European leader."
Another document from Rome reported that Berlusconi was a "physically and politically weak" leader whose "frequent late nights and penchant for partying hard mean he does not get sufficient rest," the paper reported.
And The New York Times said US diplomats in Rome expressed concern at Berlusconi's unusually close ties with Putin.
The reports mentioned lavish gifts, lucrative energy contracts and a "shadowy" Russian-speaking Italian intermediary, the paper reported.
The opposition Democratic Party said the latest revelations "confirm the level of discredit that Berlusconi has brought to Italy's image in the world."British PM faces 'embarrassing' leaked memo
LONDON: Britain's Guardian newspaper Monday promised it would release leaked memos in which US officials offer "embarrassing" assessments of Prime Minister David Cameron and "weak" ex-leader Gordon Brown.
The paper began Sunday releasing a raft of documents sent by US embassies worldwide and will continue to do so daily over the next two weeks.
The documents relating to Brown and Cameron have not been released, but the newspaper said to expect damning verdicts on the coalition government and Brown.
WikiLeaks is releasing over 250,000 embassy cables, dating from 1966 to the end of February this year, in stages over the next few months.
WikiLeaks: French adviser branded Iran 'fascist state'
PARIS: President Nicolas Sarkozy's top diplomatic adviser branded Iran a "fascist state" in a meeting with senior US officials last year, according to documents leaked on Sunday by website WikiLeaks.
Jean-David Levitte made the comment in talks on September 16, 2009 with US Assistant Secretary of State Philip Gordon, according to a copy of a US memo published on the website of the British daily The Guardian.
Levitte warned that Iran's response to US President Barack Obama's bid to engage it on dialogue over the future of its alleged nuclear weapons programme was a "farce" and regretted that Moscow had taken it seriously.
"The current Iranian regime is effectively a fascist state and the time has come to decide on next steps," Levitte warned, according to the memo, as he called for Obama to talk with Sarkozy about a tougher sanctions regime.
"The Iranian regime must understand that it will be more threatened by economic harm and the attendant social unrest than it would be by negotiating with the West," he argued, according to the memo.
Sarkozy has been one of the more hawkish Western leaders on Iran, often pushing Washington and the international community to take tougher steps, despite China's reluctance to risk damage to its oil supplies from Tehran.
Levitte also expressed concern that Israel might take unilateral military action to hit Iranian nuclear facilities.
"Levitte said that he informed the Chinese foreign minister that if they delay until a possible Israeli raid, then the world will have to deal with a catastrophic energy crisis as well," the memo said.
Washington and other Western capitals have condemned Sunday's mass leak of US diplomatic cables, but have not denied they are genuine. Kadhafi never without 'voluptuous' nurse: WikiLeaks
WASHINGTON: Veteran Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi fears flying over water, prefers staying on the ground floor and almost never travels without his trusted Ukrainian nurse, a "voluptuous blond," according to a US document released Sunday by WikiLeaks.
Kadhafi's eccentric and unpredictable personality is described with relish in the State Department cable, which was posted on the New York Times website, a small sampling of the more than 250,00 documents unveiled by WikiLeaks on Sunday despite Washington's protests.
The cable from September 2009 describes how Kadhafi's preferences for shorter flights and accommodation on the ground floor created logistical headaches for his staff, and that the Libyan leader never traveled without a certain Ukrainian nurse at his side.
Kadhafi had a team of nurses and "relies heavily on his long-time Ukrainian nurse, Galyna Kolotnytska, who has been described as a 'voluptuous blond,'"
said a secret cable from the Tripoli embassy dated September 29, 2009, written by the US ambassador, Gene Cretz.
One source, whose name was blacked out by the Times, tells the US embassy that Kadhafi cannot travel without Kolotnytska, "as she alone 'knows his routine,'" it said.
"Some embassy contacts have claimed that Qadhafi and the 38 year-old Kolotnytska have a romantic relationship," it said.
"While he did not comment on such rumors, a Ukrainian political officer recently confirmed that the Ukrainian nurses 'travel everywhere with the Leader.'"
The cable was written after US officials had discussed arrangements for the Libyan leader's visit to New York last year to address the UN General Assembly.
After the nurse's travel paperwork was delayed, the Libyan government arranged a private jet to fetch her so she could join Kadhafi and his entourage in Portugal, where the leader spent the night en route to New York, according to the document.
During his visit, his first to the United States, Kadhafi was not allowed to set up his customary tent in Manhattan or to visit the site of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
According to other documents cited by the New York Times which were not posted on the paper's website, Kadhafi was so angered by his reception in New York that he threatened to break a pledge to return enriched uranium to Russia.
The US ambassador to Libya told the leader's son "that the Libyan government had chosen a very dangerous venue to express its pique," said the cable, quoted by the Times.
The September 29 cable said Kadhafi is "almost obsessively dependent on a small core of trusted personnel" who handle every detail.
The leader's "dislike of long flights and apparent fear of flying over water also caused logistical headaches for his staff" prior to the New York visit, the document said.
For his US trip, Kadhafi flew to Portugal and stayed the night, as a source said he "cannot fly more than eight hours" and that Kadhafi "does not like to fly over water."
US diplomats were also told that Kadhafi "must stay on the first floor of any facility that was rented for him" and that the leader "could not climb more than 35 steps."
This was the reason why Libyan officials chose an official residence in New Jersey as the preferred place for Kadhafi to stay during his US visit, instead of a Libyan diplomat's home in Manhattan, it said.
Although he had his Ukrainian nurse close at hand, Kadhafi did not bring his famed all-women guard unit with him to New York, and instead had only one female guard in a 350-member delegation, it said.
Karzai's brother 'corrupt drugs baron' US says: WikiLeaksKABUL: Leaked US documents on Monday painted President Hamid Karzai's controversial younger brother as a corrupt drugs baron, exposing deep US concerns about graft undermining the war against the Afghan Taliban.
Internet whistleblower WikiLeaks has started to release quarter of a million confidential US diplomatic cables, detailing embarrassing and inflammatory episodes in what the White House has condemned as a "reckless and dangerous action".
Ahmed Wali Karzai has long been dogged by allegations of unsavoury links to Afghanistan's lucrative opium trade and private security firms.
But as a powerful figure in Kandahar, where US forces are leading the fight to break a nine-year Taliban insurgency, Western officials have kept quiet in public on the president's younger half brother's tainted record.
Leaked cables from the US embassy in Kabul now reveal their true feelings in moves that could complicate already strained relations between Washington and Karzai at a key juncture in the war.
"While we must deal with AWK (Ahmed Wali Karzai) as the head of the provincial council, he is widely understood to be corrupt and a narcotics trafficker," said one note that followed a meeting between the president's brother and US envoy Frank Ruggiero in September 2009.
Of the meeting itself, the report said Karzai "dressed in a crisp white shalwar kameez and pinstriped vest, appeared nervous, though eager to express his views on the international presence in Kandahar."
Kandahar is a make-or-break battleground in the US-led fight to defeat the insurgency, where the United States has poured in thousands of extra troops to wrest the initiative from the Taliban and bolster the Afghan government.
In May, British Major General Nick Carter, then NATO commander in southern Afghanistan, had said that he hoped Karzai -- chairman of the legislative council -- would cede power to the governor of the province, Tooryalai Wesa.
Afghanistan is ranked one of the most corrupt countries in the world, where official graft undermines public support for the Western-backed government and is believed to help fuel support for the Taliban insurgency.
"The meeting with AWK highlights one of our major challenges in Afghanistan: how to fight corruption and connect the people to their government, when the key government officials are themselves corrupt," the report acknowledged.
In the 2009 meeting with American and Canadian officials, the president's brother urged the allies not to fund small-scale cash projects -- a cornerstone of its counter-insurgency strategy -- but to build large mega-projects instead.
"Given AWK's reputation for shady dealings, his recommendations for large, costly infrastructure projects should be viewed with a healthy dose of scepticism," the report said.
"We will continue to urge AWK to improve his own credibility gap," said the report.
Karzai, who also runs his own private militia in the province, is reported to have said the plethora of independent security firms run by different men in the region should be brought under the control of one man.
The cable noted: "AWK is understood to have a stake in private security contracting, and has aggressively lobbied the Canadians to have his security services retained."
The report said that both Karzai and Wesa had tried to influence the awarding of contracts in the province.
Karzai also showed disdain for democratic elections in the region, the report said, insisting that local elders were better placed to provide governance for the area.
In a second meeting in February, Karzai told Ruggiero that he was willing to take a polygraph test to prove his innocence over claims of his involvement in the opium trade.
"He appears not to understand the level of our knowledge of his activities, and that the coalition views many of his activities as malign, particularly relating to his influence over the police," said the cable.
"We will need to monitor his activity closely...."
President Karzai has another brother, Mahmood Karzai, a former restaurant owner in the United States who is being investigated for tax evasion, according to a report in The Washington Post last month.
The Afghan government gave no immediate comment over the leaked documents.
Leaked wires show undiplomatic US take on leaders WASHINGTON: Diplomats are by definition known for the niceties of their public statements, but leaked documents out Sunday show that US officials can be merciless in their assessments behind closed doors.
The thousands of secret cables released by the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks feature unflattering descriptions of the leaders of both US allies and adversaries.
Here are some of the more colorful descriptions, as found in the leaked documents:
-- ITALIAN PRIME MINISTER SILVIO BERLUSCONI. A senior US diplomat described him as "feckless, vain, and ineffective as a modern European leader." Another cable called him "physically and politically weak" and said he did not rest properly because of his late-night partying.
-- AFGHAN PRESIDENT HAMID KARZAI. A cable described Karzai as "extremely weak" and prone to being persuaded by conspiracy theories. Karzai has had a rocky relationship with US President Barack Obama.
-- LIBYAN LEADER MOAMER KADHAFI. A cable says Kadhafi is "almost obsessively dependent on a small core of trusted personnel" and reportedly cannot travel without a particular "voluptuous" Ukrainian nurse. Kadhafi is said to suffer from fears of flying over water and staying on upper floors of buildings.
-- RUSSIAN PRESIDENT DMITRY MEDVEDEV. Despite officially being the head of state and above Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the US embassy in Moscow says Medvedev "plays Robin to Putin's Batman."
-- GERMAN CHANCELLOR ANGELA MERKEL. A document called her "risk averse and rarely creative." Her vice chancellor and foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, is said to have an "exuberant personality" but little foreign policy know-how.
-- FRENCH PRESIDENT NICOLAS SARKOZY. The US embassy called him "thin-skinned and authoritarian," pointing to his rebukes of his team.
-- YEMENI PRESIDENT ALI ABDULLAH SALEH. A cable said he came off as "dismissive, bored and impatient" during a meeting with John Brennan, Obama's counter-terrorism aide. Yemen is emerging as a front line in US efforts against Islamic extremists.
-- ZIMBABWE'S PRESIDENT ROBERT MUGABE. "To give the devil his due, he is a brilliant tactitian (sic)," outgoing US ambassador Christopher Dell wrote in 2007, saying Mugabe has survived because he is "more clever and more ruthless than any other politician in Zimbabwe." Merkel slammed by US as 'risk averse': WikiLeaks
BERLIN: Diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks to German news magazine Der Spiegel include embarrassingly frank US assessments of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is described as a weak leader.
In a message attributed to a US diplomat in Berlin dated March 24, 2009, the State Department is told that Merkel is "risk averse and rarely creative", Der Spiegel reported on Sunday.
"The Americans argue that the chancellor views international diplomacy above all from the perspective of how she can profit from it domestically," the magazine wrote.
Merkel's vice-chancellor and foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, comes in for harsher criticism in the secret documents and is described as incompetent, vain and critical of America, Der Spiegel said.
An embassy cable from Berlin from September 22, 2009, days before the general election that put him in office, describes Westerwelle as having an "exuberant personality" but little foreign policy experience.
"That is why he finds it difficult to take a backseat when it comes to any matters of dispute with Chancellor Angela Merkel," the cable quoted by Der Spiegel says.
Meanwhile Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, Germany's most popular politician, is quoted as telling the US ambassador to Germany, Philip Murphy, in February 2010 that Westerwelle was the real barrier to a US request for an increase in the number of German troops in Afghanistan.
Zu Guttenberg also disparages his boss, saying that Merkel has trouble implementing her own economic policies.
And Horst Seehofer, the head of the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party to Merkel's Christian Democrats, is shown as unaware that half of 40,000 US troops in Germany are based in his state, which he also governs.
The State Department documents show Washington was kept abreast of coalition negotiations by an informant while Merkel was forming her current
government in October 2009.
A German diplomatic source said that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had called Westerwelle on Friday to "express her regret about the impending publication of internal US documents".S.Korea wants China to back reunification via trade: leaks
SEOUL: South Korea believes that the offer of commercial deals could help a reluctant China get on board the idea of Korean reunification, according to US diplomatic cables cited by the New York Times.
The cables, part of a trove divulged by WikiLeaks, showed contingency planning by US and South Korean diplomats should the isolated communist state of North Korea implode, according to an NYT report.
A February 2010 cable from the US ambassador in Seoul said South Korean officials believe that the right trade inducements would "help salve" China's "concerns about living with a reunified Korea" existing in a "benign alliance" with the United States, the report said.
The actual cable was not immediately accessible on the WikiLeaks database.
The whistle-blower website has said it will publish thousands more documents over the coming days.
China sent hundreds of thousands of troops to fight for North Korea during the 1950-53 war after advancing US-led United Nations forces approached its Yalu border river with the North.
It is widely believed to be uneasy at the prospect of a unified Korea with strong ties to the United States, which currently has 28,500 troops stationed in the South.
China also fears that instability in the North could prompt a flood of refugees into its northeastern provinces.
South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak in August unveiled a multi-step blueprint for reunification, starting with a "peace community" after the peninsula is cleared of nuclear weapons.
The next step is to dramatically develop the North's economy and form an "economic community in which the two will work for economic integration", he said at the time, also proposing a unification tax in the South to finance the hefty cost.
UN makes no comment on Wikileak revelations
UNITED NATIONS: The United Nations said Sunday that it relies on member states to respect immunities granted to the world body, in its first statement on leaked documents which told how US officials were ordered its officials to spy on the UN leadership.
"The UN is not in a position to comment on the authenticity of the document purporting to request information-gathering activities on UN officials and activities," a UN spokesman said in a statement, after a first batch of documents released by the Wikileaks website were reported by newspapers.
Britain's Guardian newspaper said a State Department directive sent in July sought intelligence on UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's "management and decision-making style".
The government also asked for credit card numbers, email addresses, phone, fax and pager numbers and even frequent-flyer account numbers for UN officials, the daily added.
"The UN is by its very nature a transparent organization that makes a great deal of information about its activities available to the public and member states," the UN spokesman said in the statement.
"UN officials regularly meet representatives of member states to brief them on UN activities."
The statement said the UN Charter, an agreement under which the
headquarters was based in New York and the 1946 United Nations Convention guarantee "the privileges and immunities of the organization.
"The UN relies on the adherence by member states to these various undertakings," said the statement which did not mention the United States by name.
US concerned over French ship for Russia: WikiLeaks
WASHINGTON: The United States voiced concern to France earlier this year over the possible sale of a French warship to Russia, saying it sent a "mixed signal" to both Moscow and Eastern European allies, according to a leaked US document published Sunday.
In a meeting on February 8 in Paris, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his French counterpart at the time, Herve Morin, disagreed over missile defense for Europe and over France's plans to sell the Mistral-class helicopter carrier to Russia, a secret diplomatic cable posted by the WikiLeaks website showed.
Gates, a former CIA director who closely followed the former Soviet Union, also offered a severe critique of Russia, saying democracy had "disappeared"
there and that the government was essentially an oligarchy dominated by the security services.
In a meeting that touched on an array of issues, Gates "raised US concerns over the sale of a Mistral-class helicopter carrier to Russia as sending a mixed signal to both Russia and our Central and East European Allies," the cable said.
Morin disagreed, saying the warship would not alter Russia's overall military power.
"Morin told SecDef (secretary of defense) pointedly that he had pushed hard for the sale. He conceded that it was indeed a warship for power projection," the document said.
"But Morin asked rhetorically how we can tell Russia we desire partnership but then not trust them."
Morin expressed understanding of the US view that Central and East European states saw Russia as a potential threat, but argued "that this single ship would not make any difference with respect to Russian capabilities, as Russia's naval production ability was severely degraded."
Gates pointed to France's efforts in brokering a ceasefire in Georgia, saying that Moscow was not fully honoring the agreement and that the sale of the carrier would send the wrong message to Moscow as well as former Soviet satellites in Europe, it said.
The former CIA intelligence analyst also described Russia's government in blunt terms.
"SecDef observed that Russian democracy has disappeared and the government was an oligarchy run by the security services.
"President (Dmitry) Medvedev has a more pragmatic vision for Russia than PM (Vladimir) Putin, but there has been little real change," it said, referring to Gates' comments.
The cable recounted Morin questioning President Barack Obama's decision to set a date of July 2011 for the start of a withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, saying it could encourage Taliban insurgents to merely "wait it out," the document said.
Gates acknowledged that the target date had set off a "protracted" debate in Washington but said he "had come to the conclusion, however, that the Afghans needed to be put on notice that they would need to take responsibility for their own security," it said.
The account of the February meeting showed Morin strongly opposing US plans for a missile defense system in Europe tied to NATO allies. The alliance, however, approved the proposal at a summit in Lisbon a week ago.
Morin argued the US plan would "give publics a false sense of security," and said European countries lacked the funds to spend on missile defense weaponry, it said.
US diplomats called Putin 'alpha male': report
MOSCOW: US diplomats refer to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev as a hesitant leader and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as an "alpha male," Kommersant reported Monday citing documents released by WikiLeaks.
The respected business daily said the relevant WikiLeaks documents were obtained by Germany's Der Spiegel weekly and released on a private Twitter account.
"The Americans call the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev pale and hesitant, and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin an alpha male," the newspaper wrote.
Kommersant cited a Kremlin source as saying that Washington had warned Moscow that the website would release information that was damaging to Russia-US relations and that officials here were prepared for the news.
"Our own diplomats are sometimes just as open in their own private messages to each other," the unidentified Kremlin official was quoted as saying.
Putin's spokesman meanwhile told the daily that it was premature to take the reported character portraits too seriously.
"We have to wait and see what level of diplomats made these comments, and
in what documents they appear," spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the daily.
"And anyway, we have to find out if it is actually Putin they are talking about," Peskov added.
US suspected China pressing Kyrgyzstan: leaked files
WASHINGTON: The United States confronted China on information it tried to pressure Kyrgyzstan to pull the rug from a US base, possibly due to a dispute over Guantanamo detainees, a leaked document said Sunday.
In a confidential cable last year, released by WikiLeaks, a US diplomat quoted Kyrgyz officials saying that China had offered three billion dollars to close Manas air base, a key US conduit for the war in Afghanistan.
US Ambassador Tatiana Gfoeller said she asked her Chinese counterpart, Zhang Yannian, about the allegations and that he became so flustered he briefly lost his ability to converse in Russian.
Zhang "ridiculed the notion of such a deal, he did not deny it outright," she wrote.
"'It would take three dollars from every Chinese person' to pay for it," she quoted him as saying. "'If our people found out, there'd be a revolution.'"
Zhang said that China had only commercial interests in Kyrgyzstan but "complained bitterly" about inmates from China's Uighur minority being held at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay.
The United States cleared 22 Uighur detainees of wrongdoing but refused to hand them over to China, fearing they would face persecution.
Other cables depicted US officials searching the world asking countries to take former Guantanamo inmates, with Slovenia's leadership told that a meeting with President Barack Obama was linked to its decision on taking a prisoner.
Kyrgyzstan's former president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who was ousted in a coup in April, vowed to close the base last year before allowing it to stay open after receiving a significant increase in rent from Washington.
Gfoeller said the Chinese ambassador agreed that a two-billion-dollar package offered to Kyrgyzstan by Russia was tied to closing down Manas, saying that the Russian ambassador was recently in "an expansive mood."
US worry about Turkish PM's dependability: WikiLeaks
BERLIN: Diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks to German news magazine Der Spiegel show US diplomats have doubts about Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's dependability as a partner.
American diplomats distrust Erdogan and his unrealistic views on the world, wrote Der Spiegel. He gets his information almost exclusively from newspapers with links to the Islamists, and allegedly has little time for the analyses of his ministries, the diplomats believe.
The prime minister, one of the United States' most important NATO partners, has surrounded himself with "an iron ring of sycophantic (but contemptuous) advisors," writes a diplomat.
Despite his bragging, he is afraid of losing power, according to the dispatches viewed by Der Spiegel. One source is quoted as telling the Americans: "Tayyip believes in God but doesn't trust Him".
Erdogan's advisors, and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, are portrayed as having little understanding of politics beyond Turkey.
A high-ranking government adviser, quoted by US diplomats, describes Davutoglu as "exceptionally dangerous" and warns that he would use his Islamist influence on Erdogan.
A cable signed by the US ambassador in January 2010 says the foreign minister wants to reassert on the Balkans the influence the Ottoman empire used to exert on the region.
But the foreign minister overestimates himself and Turkey, wrote the US diplomats. Turkey, sums up a cable translated into German by the magazine, "has the ambitions of Rolls Royce but the means of Rover".
WikiLeaks cables offer inside peek at global crises
WASHINGTON: The whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks released thousands of sensitive US diplomatic cables on Sunday that include candid views of foreign leaders and blunt assessments of nuclear and terrorist threats.
Some of the cables made available to a handful of newspapers around the world provide an inside peek at US diplomatic views and actions in North Korea, Iran, Pakistan and elsewhere.
The US government condemned the release, saying it could compromise private discussions with foreign leaders and endanger the lives of named individuals living "under oppressive regimes."
Here is a look at some of the main substantive revelations in the cables, published by the New York Times:
-- China's Politburo directed the intrusion into Google's computer systems in that country, a Chinese contact told the US Embassy in January, as part of a computer sabotage campaign carried out by government operatives, private experts and Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese government. They have broken into US government computers and those of Western allies, the Dalai Lama and American businesses since 2002, cables said.
-- King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has repeatedly urged the United States to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear program and is reported to have advised Washington to "cut off the head of the snake" while there was still time.
-- US and South Korean officials discussed the prospects for a unified Korea should the North's economic troubles and political transition lead the state to implode. The South Koreans considered commercial inducements to China to "help salve" Chinese concerns about living with a reunified Korea that is in a "benign alliance" with Washington, according to the American ambassador to Seoul.
-- Since 2007, the United States has mounted a secret and so far unsuccessful effort to remove highly enriched uranium from a Pakistani research reactor out of fear it could be diverted for use in an illicit nuclear device.
-- Iran has obtained sophisticated missiles from North Korea capable of hitting western Europe, and the United States is concerned Iran is using those rockets as "building blocks" to build longer-range missiles. The advanced missiles are much more powerful than anything US officials have publicly acknowledged Iran has in its arsenal.
-- When Afghanistan's vice president, Ahmed Zia Massoud, visited the United Arab Emirates last year, local authorities working with the Drug Enforcement Administration discovered he was carrying $52 million in cash that a cable from the American Embassy in Kabul said he "was ultimately allowed to keep without revealing the money's origin or destination." He denied taking the money out of Afghanistan.
-- American diplomats have bargained with other countries to help empty the Guantanamo Bay prison by resettling detainees. Slovenia was told to take a prisoner if it wanted to meet with President Barack Obama, and Kiribati was offered incentives worth millions of dollars to take in Chinese Muslim detainees. In another case, accepting more prisoners was described as "a low-cost way for Belgium to attain prominence in Europe," a cable said.
-- Saudi donors remain the chief financiers of Sunni militant groups like Al Qaeda, and the tiny Persian Gulf state of Qatar was the "worst in the region" in counterterrorism efforts, according to a State Department cable last December. Qatar's security service was "hesitant to act against known terrorists out of concern for appearing to be aligned with the US and provoking reprisals," the cable said.
-- The United States has failed to prevent Syria from supplying arms to Hezbollah in Lebanon, which has amassed a huge stockpile since its 2006 war with Israel, the cables said. One week after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad promised a top State Department official he would not send "new" arms to Hezbollah, the United States complained it had information that Syria was giving the group increasingly sophisticated weapons.
WikiLeaks show consistent concern on Iran: Israel
JERUSALEM: Israel reacted calmly Monday to the release of a massive trove of US diplomatic cables by whistleblower website WikiLeaks, saying they showed the Jewish state's consistent concern about Iran.
"We come out looking very good," a senior government official said on condition of anonymity, adding his assessment was only preliminary and came before the full set of leaked documents were released.
The cables "demonstrate that Israel doesn't speak a double language and that we say in private what we say in public" about the threat of Iran's nuclear programme, he added.
Many of the documents released so far detail tense discussions between the United States and regional allies over Iran's nuclear drive, which Tehran says is for peaceful energy purposes but which many suspect masks a weapons drive.
"They confirm that the whole Middle East is terrified by the prospect of a nuclear Iran. The Arab countries are pushing the United States towards military action more forcefully than Israel," the Israeli official added.
The documents posted online by WikiLeaks and a select group of international media outlets on Sunday show widespread concern about Iran's nuclear programme and reveal Saudi Arabia "repeatedly" urged a US military strike on the country.
The cables confirm Israel's publicly stated fears about Tehran's nuclear intentions, but reveal Arab regimes openly called on Washington to attack Iran.
In one published by the New York Times, Saudi King Abdullah was said to have called for decisive US action on Iran during a meeting with US ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and US General David Petraeus in April 2008.
"He told you to 'cut off the head of the snake'," Saudi Arabia's US ambassador Adel al-Jubeir told the US embassy in Riyadh two days after the
high-level talks.
WikiLeaks shows 21st-century secrets harder to keep
LONDON: The diplomatic cables so far released by WikiLeaks might embarrass US diplomats but probably won't shatter any international relationships.
The key lesson so far seems to be just how much easier the information age has made it to steal vast quantities of data -- and how much harder it is to keep secrets.
The US and other governments have been keen to talk up the potential diplomatic damage from the release of some 250,000 cables, details of which began to be published on Sunday by Western newspapers.
The cables, some of which were released in full and some only in part, revealed confidential -- and often unflattering -- views and information from senior US diplomats based overseas that would normally have been kept confidential for decades.
Experts and former officials are divided over the impact. Speaking before the release, Italy's foreign minister Franco Frattini said he feared it would prove the "9/11 of diplomacy" and would "blow up the trust between states".
Others are much more sanguine, and believe diplomats will continue their long tradition of politeness in public and brutal honesty in the reports back home.
"This won't restrain dips' (diplomats) candour," Sir Christopher Meyer, a former British Ambassador to Washington DC, said. "But people will be looking at the security of electronic communications and archives. Paper would have been impossible to steal in these quantities."
That's a lesson governments have been learning fast. British officials have been embarrassed several times by the loss of discs containing personal data for thousands of members of the general public, while experts say hackers have stolen truckloads of sensitive information from Western corporates.
In the case of the latest release -- as with years' worth of US military logs on the Iraq and Afghanistan conflict earlier this year -- the cables appear to have been stolen by just one person. US Army private Bradley Manning has been charged with leaking classified information and is in military custody.
JEOPARDISING DIPLOMACY?
"Whoever was behind this leak should be shot and I would volunteer to pull the trigger," said former US cyber Security and counterterrorism official Roger Cressey, describing it as "pretty devastating".
"The essence of our foreign policy is our ability to talk straight and honest with our foreign counterparts and to keep those conversations out of the public domain. This massive leak puts that most basic of diplomatic requirements at risk in the future."
Cressey points to sensitive relations with Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, both key to US strategy against militancy. The cables include criticism of both countries and details of conversations with their senior officials.
Some western leaders reportedly come in for criticism, including British Prime Minister David Cameron. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is described as risk-averse and "rarely creative".
"It is a sign that in the information age, it is very difficult to keep anything secret," said Professor Michael Cox, associate fellow at London think tank Chatham House.
"But as to whether it is going to cause the kind of seismic collapse of international relations that governments have been talking about, I somehow doubt. Diplomats have always said rude things about each other in private, and everyone has always known that."
Some of those who should be most aware of security had been tripped up by the new information age. Last year, security experts were left aghast after the new head of Britain's secret intelligence service MI6's wife posted family photos and details on Facebook. Other officials have been forced to apologise after tongue-in-cheek e-mails have ended up in the public domain.
The real beneficiaries from the vast leak, Cox said, were historians, academics and students of international relations who now had a "great treasure trove" of primary evidence to go through. The volume of data is so vast that details may continue to be extracted from it for years to come.
JUST WHAT NATIONS DO?
But much remains secret. There are cables, for example, asking US diplomats to forward sensitive information on a variety of national leaders and senior politicians. But that information was sent through more secure channels reserved for sensitive intelligence, and remains largely unpublished.
"Governments have a tendency to keep as much information as possible secret or classified, whether it really needs to be or not," said Chatham House fellow Cox.
"The really secret information, I would suggest, is still pretty safe and probably won't end up on WikiLeaks."
What was more worrying, he said, was the apparent ferocity of government campaigns against the whistleblowing website.
WikiLeaks complained it was the victim of a cyber attack shortly before the data was released on Sunday, and says sexual assault accusations in Sweden against its founder Julian Assange are also orchestrated by its enemies.
For now, experts say the diplomats in Washington and elsewhere will hurry to reassure allies and soothe ruffled egos. Some may find they are less trusted -- particularly now other nations have seen the cables encouraging diplomats to effectively also function as spies.
Former US counterterrorism official Fred Burton, now vice president for risk consultancy Stratfor, said some long-term intelligence-sharing agreements might be jeopardised and the State Department would now be focused on "serious damage control".
"But this is what nations do," he said. "Rule number one in this business. There are no friendly intelligence services."
US fumes over WikiLeaks release of diplomat memosWASHINGTON: The WikiLeaks release of more than 250,000 diplomatic cables on Sunday has infuriated Washington, where officials said it could put lives in danger and threaten national security.
At least one US lawmaker called for the prosecution of the founder of the whistle-blower website, which had previously released nearly a half million classified military reports on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The White House called Sunday's release a "reckless and dangerous action" in a statement released after the first batch of cables was published by The New York Times and European newspapers.
"To be clear -- such disclosures put at risk our diplomats, intelligence professionals, and people around the world who come to the United States for assistance in promoting democracy and open government," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.
Democratic Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, called the release a "reckless action which jeopardizes lives" and rejected Assange's claims to be acting in the public interest.
"This is not an academic exercise about freedom of information and it is not akin to the release of the Pentagon Papers, which involved an analysis aimed at saving American lives and exposing government deception," he added, referring to a secret history of the Vietnam War leaked in 1971.
US Republican congressman Peter King, the ranking member of the House of Representatives' Homeland Security Committee, urged the attorney general to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for espionage.
The latest release "manifests Mr Assange's purposeful intent to damage not only our national interests in fighting the war on terror, but also undermines the very safety of coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan."
He went on to urge the State Department to designate WikiLeaks a "Foreign Terrorist Organization," saying it "posed a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States," in a statement from his office.
A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment on whether the United States was mulling criminal charges against Assange, saying only that it was assisting the Pentagon in its "ongoing investigation" into the disclosure.
The top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee said the release was "an embarrassment to the (Barack) Obama administration and represents a critical failure by the Pentagon and intelligence community."
Representative Pete Hoekstra called on the intelligence community to "move quickly to assess the failures in this case" and said Congress should also take up the matter.
The Pentagon, which also strongly condemned the release, said it had taken new steps to "prevent further compromise of sensitive data."
The steps were taken after Pentagon reviews launched in August that followed the disclosure of tens of thousands of US military intelligence files on the war in Afghanistan.
The measures included disabling all write-capability for flash drives or removable media on classified computers, restricting transfers of information from classified to unclassified systems and better monitoring of suspicious computer activity using similar tactics employed by credit card companies.
"Bottom line: It is now much more difficult for a determined actor to get access to and move information outside of authorized channels," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said.
Obama admin seeks reliable Pak partners against Al-QaedaWASHINGTON: The whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks released thousands of sensitive documents covering governments from around the world.
The cables show that nearly a decade after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the dark shadow of terrorism still dominates the United States' relations with the world. They depict the Obama administration struggling to sort out which Pakistanis are trustworthy partners against Al Qaeda, adding Australians who have disappeared in the Middle East to terrorist watch lists, and assessing whether a lurking rickshaw driver in Lahore, Pakistan, was awaiting fares or conducting surveillance of the road to the American Consulate.
The cables also disclose frank comments behind closed doors. Dispatches from early this year, for instance, quote the aging monarch of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah, as speaking scathingly about the leaders of Iraq and Pakistan.
Speaking to another Iraqi official about Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, King Abdullah said, "You and Iraq are in my heart, but that man is not." The king called President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan the greatest obstacle to that country's progress. "When the head is rotten," he said, "it affects the whole body."
Saudi King Abdullah has repeatedly urged the United States to attack Iran's nuclear program and China directed cyberattacks on the United States, according to a vast cache of diplomatic cables released on Sunday in an embarrassing leak that undermines U.S. diplomacy.
The more than 250,000 documents, given to five media groups by the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, provide candid and at times critical views of foreign leaders as well as sensitive information on terrorism and nuclear proliferation filed by U.S. diplomats, according to The New York Times.
The White House condemned the release by WikiLeaks and said the disclosures may endanger U.S. informants abroad. WikiLeaks said its website was under attack and none of the underlying cables was visible there Sunday night, though some were posted by news organizations.
Among the revelations in Britain's Guardian newspaper, which also received an advance look at the documents along with France's Le Monde, Germany's Der Spiegel and Spain's El Pais, King Abdullah is reported to have "frequently exhorted the U.S. to attack Iran to put an end to its nuclear weapons program."
"Cut off the head of the snake," the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir, quotes the king as saying during a meeting with General David Petraeus in April 2008.
The leaked documents, the majority of which are from 2007 or later, also disclose U.S. allegations that China's Politburo directed an intrusion into Google's computer systems, part of a broader coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by Chinese government operatives, private security experts and Internet outlaws, the Times reported.
As described by German news weekly Der Spiegel, the cables contain tart comments such as a U.S. diplomat's description of German Chancellor Angela Merkel as someone who "avoids risk and is seldom creative."
Another document described by The New York Times cites a U.S. embassy cable raising the possibility that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi may have had a romantic relationship with his Ukranian nurse, who is described as a "voluptuous blonde."
The newspaper said many of the cables name diplomats' confidential sources, from foreign lawmakers and military officers to human rights activists and journalists, often with a warning: "Please protect" or "Strictly protect."
Comments such a description of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's head of state, as playing "Robin to (Prime Minister Vladimir) Putin's Batman," are sure to embarrass the Obama administration and to complicate its diplomacy.
The White House said the release of the documents could endanger the lives of people who live under "oppressive regimes" and "deeply impact" the foreign policy interests of the United States, its allies and partners around the world.
"To be clear -- such disclosures put at risk our diplomats, intelligence professionals, and people around the world who come to the United States for assistance in promoting democracy and open government," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
"By releasing stolen and classified documents, WikiLeaks has put at risk not only the cause of human rights but also the lives and work of these individuals," he said.
Security analysts tended to agree that the release of the documents was a severe blow to U.S. diplomacy, undermining the confidentiality that is vital for foreign leaders and activists to talk candidly to U.S. officials.
"This is pretty devastating," Roger Cressey, a partner at Goodharbor Consulting and a former U.S. cyber security and counter-terrorism official, said in an e-mailed comment.
The U.S. government, which was informed in advance of the leaked cables' contents, contacted governments including Russia, and in Europe and the Middle East, to try to limit damage.
The White House also warned readers that the field reporting in the documents is often incomplete and does not necessarily reflect, or even shape, U.S. policy decisions.
Emile Hokayem, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said the dramatic revelation that Saudi King Abdullah counseled a U.S. strike on Iran may have been exaggerated for diplomatic effect.
"It's very possible that the Gulf states have in private adopted very aggressive rhetoric just to stress the urgency of the issue," Hokayem said. "But I personally doubt that there is an appetite for war as such."
Among the disclosures reported by The New York Times were:
-- suspicions Iran has obtained sophisticated missiles from North Korea capable of hitting western Europe, and the United States is concerned Iran is using those rockets as "building blocks" to build longer-range missiles;
-- allegations that Chinese operatives have broken into American government computers and those of Western allies, the Dalai Lama and American businesses since 2002;
-- talks between U.S. and South Korean officials about the prospects for a unified Korea should the North's economic troubles and a political transition lead the state to implode;
-- the South Koreans considered commercial inducements to China to "help salve" Chinese concerns about living with a reunified Korea that is in a "benign alliance" with Washington, according to the American ambassador to Seoul;
-- reporting that Saudi donors remain chief financiers of Sunni militant groups like al Qaeda, and the tiny Persian Gulf state of Qatar, a generous host to the American military for years, was the "worst in the region" in counterterrorism efforts, according to a State Department cable last December;
-- Since 2007, the United States has mounted a secret and so far unsuccessful effort to remove highly enriched uranium from a Pakistani research reactor out of fear it could be diverted for use in an illicit nuclear device.
Commenting on the leaked information, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi declined to comment, saying, he would comment only after reading the documents.
Giving his reaction on the same, Presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar said the US had already informed about these reports, and if needed, government of Pakistan will register its reaction.
Saudi King called Zardari greatest obstacle to Pak progress: reportNEW YORK: Saudi King Abdullah called President Asif Ali Zardari the greatest obstacle to Pakistan’s progress, according to an online report of New York Times that quoted Wikileaks as saying.
The report further quoted King Abdullah as saying: “When the head is rotten, it affects the whole body.”
The cables released by Wikileaks, the whistle-blower, disclose that aging monarch of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah, as speaking scathingly about the leaders of Iraq and Pakistan.
Speaking to another Iraqi official about Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, King Abdullah said, “You and Iraq are in my heart, but that man is not.” The king called President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan the greatest obstacle to that country’s progress. “When the head is rotten,” he said, “it affects the whole body.”
AFP quoting US documents leaked by WikiLeaks and published by Britain's Guardian newspaper, said King Abdullah urged the United States to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear programme.
Leaked memos from US embassies across the Middle East recorded the king's "frequent exhortations to the US to attack Iran and so put an end to its nuclear weapons program."
The memo showed that the king told the United States to "cut off the head of the snake," and said that working with Washington to roll back Iranian influence in Iraq was "a strategic priority for the king and his government."
US tried to remove enriched uranium from Pak facility: report
WASHINGTON: A cache of a quarter-million confidential American diplomatic cables, most of them from the past three years, provides an unprecedented look at backroom bargaining by embassies around the world, brutally candid views of foreign leaders and frank assessments of nuclear and terrorist threats, said The New York Times on its website on Sunday.
It said some of the cables, made available to NY Times and several other news organizations, were written as recently as late February, revealing the Obama administration's exchanges over crises and conflicts. The material was originally obtained by WikiLeaks, an organization devoted to revealing secret documents. WikiLeaks intends to make the archive public on its Web site in batches, beginning Sunday.
The anticipated disclosure of the cables is already sending shudders through the diplomatic establishment, and could conceivably strain relations with some countries, influencing international affairs in ways that are impossible to predict.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and American ambassadors around the world have been contacting foreign officials in recent days to alert them to the expected disclosures. A statement from the White House on Sunday said: "We condemn in the strongest terms the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information."
"President Obama supports responsible, accountable, and open government at home and around the world, but this reckless and dangerous action runs counter to that goal," the statement said. "By releasing stolen and classified documents, WikiLeaks has put at risk not only the cause of human rights but also the lives and work of these individuals."
The cables, a huge sampling of the daily traffic between the State Department and some 270 embassies and consulates, amount to a secret chronicle of the United States' relations with the world in an age of war and terrorism. Among their revelations, to be detailed in The Times in coming days:
A dangerous standoff with Pakistan over nuclear fuel: Since 2007, the United States has mounted a highly secret effort, so far unsuccessful, to remove from a Pakistani research reactor highly enriched uranium that American officials fear could be diverted for use in an illicit nuclear device. In May 2009, Ambassador Anne W. Patterson reported that Pakistan was refusing to schedule a visit by American technical experts because, as a Pakistani official said, "if the local media got word of the fuel removal, 'they certainly would portray it as the United States taking Pakistan's nuclear weapons,' he argued."
Gaming out an eventual collapse of North Korea: American and South Korean officials have discussed the prospects for a unified Korea, should the North's economic troubles and political transition lead the state to implode. The South Koreans even considered commercial inducements to China, according to the American ambassador to Seoul. She told Washington in February that South Korean officials believe that the right business deals would "help salve" China's "concerns about living with a reunified Korea" that is in a "benign alliance" with the United States.
Bargaining to empty the Guantánamo Bay prison: When American diplomats pressed other countries to resettle detainees, they became reluctant players in a State Department version of "Let's Make a Deal." Slovenia was told to take a prisoner if it wanted to meet with President Obama, while the island nation of Kiribati was offered incentives worth millions of dollars to take in Chinese Muslim detainees, cables from diplomats recounted. The Americans, meanwhile, suggested that accepting more prisoners would be "a low-cost way for Belgium to attain prominence in Europe."
Suspicions of corruption in the Afghan government: When Afghanistan's vice president visited the United Arab Emirates last year, local authorities working with the Drug Enforcement Administration discovered that he was carrying $52 million in cash. With wry understatement, a cable from the American Embassy in Kabul called the money "a significant amount" that the official, Ahmed Zia Massoud, "was ultimately allowed to keep without revealing the money's origin or destination." (Mr. Massoud denies taking any money out of Afghanistan.)
A global computer hacking effort: China's Politburo directed the intrusion into Google's computer systems in that country, a Chinese contact told the American Embassy in Beijing in January, one cable reported. The Google hacking was part of a coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by government operatives, private security experts and Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese government. They have broken into American government computers and those of Western allies, the Dalai Lama and American businesses since 2002, cables said.
Mixed records against terrorism: Saudi donors remain the chief financiers of Sunni militant groups like Al Qaeda, and the tiny Persian Gulf state of Qatar, a generous host to the American military for years, was the "worst in the region" in counterterrorism efforts, according to a State Department cable last December. Qatar's security service was "hesitant to act against known terrorists out of concern for appearing to be aligned with the U.S. and provoking reprisals," the cable said.
An intriguing alliance: American diplomats in Rome reported in 2009 on what their Italian contacts described as an extraordinarily close relationship between Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian prime minister, and Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister and business magnate, including "lavish gifts," lucrative energy contracts and a "shadowy" Russian-speaking Italian go-between. They wrote that Mr. Berlusconi "appears increasingly to be the mouthpiece of Putin" in Europe. The diplomats also noted that while Mr. Putin enjoys supremacy over all other public figures in Russia, he is undermined by an unmanageable bureaucracy that often ignores his edicts.
Arms deliveries to militants: Cables describe the United States' failing struggle to prevent Syria from supplying arms to Hezbollah in Lebanon, which has amassed a huge stockpile since its 2006 war with Israel. One week after President Bashar al-Assad promised a top State Department official that he would not send "new" arms to Hezbollah, the United States complained that it had information that Syria was providing increasingly sophisticated weapons to the group.
Clashes with Europe over human rights: American officials sharply warned Germany in 2007 not to enforce arrest warrants for Central Intelligence Agency officers involved in a bungled operation in which an innocent German citizen with the same name as a suspected militant was mistakenly kidnapped and held for months in Afghanistan. A senior American diplomat told a German official "that our intention was not to threaten Germany, but rather to urge that the German government weigh carefully at every step of the way the implications for relations with the U.S."
The 251,287 cables, first acquired by WikiLeaks, were provided to The Times by an intermediary on the condition of anonymity. Many are unclassified, and none are marked "top secret," the government's most secure communications status. But some 11,000 are classified "secret," 9,000 are labeled "noforn," shorthand for material considered too delicate to be shared with any foreign government, and 4,000 are designated both secret and noforn.
Many more cables name diplomats' confidential sources, from foreign legislators and military officers to human rights activists and journalists, often with a warning to Washington: "Please protect" or "Strictly protect."
The Times has withheld from articles and removed from documents it is posting online the names of some people who spoke privately to diplomats and might be at risk if they were publicly identified. The Times is also withholding some passages or entire cables whose disclosure could compromise American intelligence efforts.
Terrorism's Shadow
The cables show that nearly a decade after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the dark shadow of terrorism still dominates the United States' relations with the world. They depict the Obama administration struggling to sort out which Pakistanis are trustworthy partners against Al Qaeda, adding Australians who have disappeared in the Middle East to terrorist watch lists, and assessing whether a lurking rickshaw driver in Lahore, Pakistan, was awaiting fares or conducting surveillance of the road to the American Consulate.
They show American officials managing relations with a China on the rise and a Russia retreating from democracy. They document years of painstaking effort to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon - and of worry about a possible Israeli strike on Iran with the same goal.
Even when they recount events that are already known, the cables offer remarkable details.
For instance, it has been previously reported that the Yemeni government has sought to cover up the American role in missile strikes against the local branch of Al Qaeda. But a cable's fly-on-the-wall account of a January meeting between the Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, and Gen. David H. Petraeus, then the American commander in the Middle East, is nonetheless breathtaking.
"We'll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours," Mr. Saleh said, according to the cable sent by the American ambassador, prompting Yemen's deputy prime minister to "joke that he had just 'lied' by telling Parliament" that Yemeni forces had carried out the strikes.
Mr. Saleh, who at other times resisted American counterterrorism requests, was in a lighthearted mood. The authoritarian ruler of a conservative Muslim country, Mr. Saleh complains of smuggling from nearby Djibouti, but tells General Petraeus that his concerns are drugs and weapons, not whiskey, "provided it's good whiskey."
Likewise, press reports detailed the unhappiness of the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, when he was not permitted to set up his tent in Manhattan or to visit ground zero during a United Nations session last year.
But the cables add to the tale a touch of scandal and alarm. They describe the volatile Libyan leader as rarely without the companionship of "his senior Ukrainian nurse," described as "a voluptuous blonde." They reveal that Colonel Qaddafi was so upset by his reception in New York that he balked at carrying out a promise to return dangerous enriched uranium to Russia. The American ambassador to Libya told Colonel Qaddafi's son "that the Libyan government had chosen a very dangerous venue to express its pique," a cable reported to Washington.
The cables also disclose frank comments behind closed doors. Dispatches from early this year, for instance, quote the aging monarch of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah, as speaking scathingly about the leaders of Iraq and Pakistan.
Speaking to another Iraqi official about Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, King Abdullah said, "You and Iraq are in my heart, but that man is not." The king called President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan the greatest obstacle to that country's progress. "When the head is rotten," he said, "it affects the whole body."
The American ambassador to Eritrea reported last year that "Eritrean officials are ignorant or lying" in denying that they were supporting the Shabab, a militant Islamist group in Somalia. The cable then mused about which seemed more likely.
As he left Zimbabwe in 2007 after three years as ambassador, Christopher W. Dell wrote a sardonic account of Robert Mugabe, that country's aging and erratic leader. The cable called Mr. Mugabe "a brilliant tactician" but mocked "his deep ignorance on economic issues (coupled with the belief that his 18 doctorates give him the authority to suspend the laws of economics)."
The possibility that a large number of diplomatic cables might become public has been discussed in government and media circles since May. That was when, in an online chat, an Army intelligence analyst, Pfc. Bradley Manning, described having downloaded from a military computer system many classified documents, including "260,000 State Department cables from embassies and consulates all over the world." In an online discussion with Adrian Lamo, a computer hacker, Private Manning said he had delivered the cables and other documents to WikiLeaks.
Mr. Lamo reported Private Manning's disclosures to federal authorities, and Private Manning was arrested. He has been charged with illegally leaking classified information and faces a possible court-martial and, if convicted, a lengthy prison term.
In July and October, The Times, the British newspaper The Guardian and the German magazine Der Spiegel published articles based on documents about Afghanistan and Iraq. Those collections of dispatches were placed online by WikiLeaks, with selective redactions of the Afghan documents and much heavier redactions of the Iraq reports. The group has said it intends to post the documents in the current trove as well, after editing to remove the names of confidential sources and other details.
Fodder for Historians
Traditionally, most diplomatic cables remain secret for decades, providing fodder for historians only when the participants are long retired or dead. The State Department's unclassified history series, entitled "Foreign Relations of the United States," has reached only the year 1972.
While an overwhelming majority of the quarter-million cables provided to The Times are from the post-9/11 era, several hundred date from 1966 to the 1990s. Some show diplomats struggling to make sense of major events whose future course they could not guess.
In a 1979 cable to Washington, Bruce Laingen, an American diplomat in Teheran, mused with a knowing tone about the Iranian revolution that had just occurred: "Perhaps the single dominant aspect of the Persian psyche is an overriding egoism," Mr. Laingen wrote, offering tips on exploiting this psyche in negotiations with the new government. Less than three months later, Mr. Laingen and his colleagues would be taken hostage by radical Iranian students, hurling the Carter administration into crisis and, perhaps, demonstrating the hazards of diplomatic hubris.
In 1989, an American diplomat in Panama City mulled over the options open to Gen. Manuel Noriega, the Panamanian leader, who was facing narcotics charges in the United States and intense domestic and international political pressure to step down. The cable called General Noriega "a master of survival"; its author appeared to have no inkling that one week later, the United States would invade Panama to unseat General Noriega and arrest him.
In 1990, an American diplomat sent an excited dispatch from Cape Town: he had just learned from a lawyer for Nelson Mandela that Mr. Mandela's 27-year imprisonment was to end. The cable conveys the momentous changes about to begin for South Africa, even as it discusses preparations for an impending visit from the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson.
The voluminous traffic of more recent years - well over half of the quarter-million cables date from 2007 or later - show American officials struggling with events whose outcomes are far from sure. To read through them is to become a global voyeur, immersed in the jawboning, inducements and penalties the United States wields in trying to have its way with a recalcitrant world.
In an era of satellites and fiber-optic links, the diplomatic cable retains the archaic name of an earlier technological era. It has long been the tool for the secretary of state to dispatch orders to the field and for ambassadors and political officers to send their analyses back to Washington.
The cables come with their own lexicon: "codel," for a visiting Congressional delegation; "visas viper," for a report on a person considered dangerous; "démarche," an official message to a foreign government, often a protest or warning.
Diplomatic Drama
But the drama in the cables often comes from diplomats' narratives of meetings with foreign figures, games of diplomatic poker in which each side is sizing up the other and neither is showing all its cards.
Among the most fascinating examples recount American officials' meetings in September 2009 and February 2010 with Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half brother of the Afghan president and a power broker in the Taliban's home turf of Kandahar.
They describe Mr. Karzai, "dressed in a crisp white shalwar kameez," the traditional dress of loose tunic and trousers, appearing "nervous, though eager to express his views on the international presence in Kandahar," and trying to win over the Americans with nostalgic tales about his years running a Chicago restaurant near Wrigley Field.
But in midnarrative there is a stark alert for anyone reading the cable in Washington: "Note: While we must deal with AWK as the head of the Provincial Council, he is widely understood to be corrupt and a narcotics trafficker." (Mr. Karzai has repeatedly denied such charges.) And the cables note statements by Mr. Karzai that the Americans, informed by a steady flow of eavesdropping and agents' reports, believe to be false.
A cable written after the February meeting coolly took note of the deceit on both sides.
Mr. Karzai "demonstrated that he will dissemble when it suits his needs," the cable said. "He appears not to understand the level of our knowledge of his activities. We will need to monitor his activity closely, and deliver a recurring, transparent message to him" about the limits of American tolerance.
Not all Business
Even in places far from war zones and international crises, where the stakes for the United States are not as high, curious diplomats can turn out to be accomplished reporters, sending vivid dispatches to deepen the government's understanding of exotic places.
In a 2006 account, a wide-eyed American diplomat describes the lavish wedding of a well-connected couple in Dagestan, in Russia's Caucasus, where one guest is the strongman who runs the war-ravaged Russian republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov.
The diplomat tells of drunken guests throwing $100 bills at child dancers, and nighttime water-scooter jaunts on the Caspian Sea.
"The dancers probably picked upwards of USD 5000 off the cobblestones," the diplomat wrote. The host later tells him that Ramzan Kadyrov "had brought the happy couple 'a five-kilo lump of gold' as his wedding present."
"After the dancing and a quick tour of the premises, Ramzan and his army drove off back to Chechnya," the diplomat reported to Washington. "We asked why Ramzan did not spend the night in Makhachkala, and were told, 'Ramzan never spends the night anywhere.'
Pupils raise funds for Pak flood in UK
LONDON: Students, parents and staff from Tauheedul Islam Girls High School and Tauheedul Islam Mosque in Blackburn, north west England have raised an outstanding 46,000 pounds towards the Pakistan Flood Relief Appeal.
The cheque has been presented by school officials to a Bolton-based international relief and development charity Ummah Welfare Trust. Students and worshippers have worked over the past few months, organising activities and collecting donations to rebuild lives devastated by the floods.
In a statement to the media Friday, Tauheedul Islam Mosque President, Lord Adam Patel, said: Everyone in the community, young and old, felt great shock and compassion for millions of our brothers and sisters in Pakistan. We wanted to come together as one community to express our solidarity with those affected.
WikiLeaks let loose flood of US diplomatic cables
WASHINGTON: WikiLeaks on Sunday unleashed a torrent of US cables detailing a wide array of potentially explosive diplomatic episodes, from a tense nuclear standoff with Pakistan to Saudi Arabia's king repeatedly suggesting bombing Iran, the New York Times reported.
The cables describe the bazaar-like bargaining over the repatriation of Guantanamo Bay detainees, a Chinese government bid to hack into Google, and quote Saudi King Abdullah as saying the United States should strike Iran to halt its nuclear program, telling it to "cut off the head of the snake."
They also detail plans to reunite the Korean peninsula after the North's eventual collapse, according to The New York Times, one of a handful of international media outlets that gained early access to the documents.
The cables also detail fresh suspicions about Afghan corruption, Saudi donors financing Al-Qaeda, and the US failure to prevent Syria from providing a massive stockpile of weapons to the Lebanese Hezbollah militia since 2006.
They include closed-door remarks that could stoke scandal, including Yemen's president telling a top US general: "We'll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours" when discussing secretive US strikes on Al-Qaeda in his country, and a description of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi as always being attended by a "voluptuous blonde" Ukrainian nurse.
Most of the 251,287 cables -- many of which are marked "classified" but none "top secret" -- date back to 2007, but the release also includes cables going back as far as 1966, The New York Times said.
The whistle-blower website's chief Julian Assange had earlier described the release as a "diplomatic history of the United States" that would cover "every major issue" as governments braced for damaging revelations.
"We can see already in the past week or so that the United States has made movements to try to disarm the effect that this could have," he said.
