Whistle-blower website Wikileaks uncloaks US diplomatic secrets

London/New York, Nov 29 (IBNS) Defying disapproval of the White House, online whistle-blower website Wikileaks on Sunday released nearly 250,000 diplomatic cables from U.S. embassies across the world from the past three years uncloaking the backroom bargains of world leaders and insight into their fears as well as the concerns of USA.

The leak can strain the relations between various countries and India was also warned beforehand about the leaks as a concerned US used all its diplomatic resources to alert other countries in advance.

Wikileaks said it is the largest-ever disclosure of confidential information providing “an unprecedented insight into the U.S. government’s foreign activities”.

“The cables show the U.S. spying on its allies and the U.N.; turning a blind eye to corruption and human rights abuse in ‘client states’; backroom deals with supposedly neutral countries; and lobbying for U.S. corporations,” the site’s editor-in-chief and spokesman, Julian Assange, said in a statement released Sunday evening.

The documents reveal information like Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah urging USA to attack Iran and end its nuclear programme besides concerns of other Arab leaders.

Some disclosures also pertains to the security of Pakistani nuclear material that could be used to make an atomic weapons.

Wikileaks has only posted some 200 of the 251,287 messages but five publications, including The New York Times and UK’s Guardian, have access to all materials, reports said.

The White House on Sunday said in a statement: ?We condemn in the strongest terms the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information.?

According to BBC, the leaked US embassy cables include accounts of Iran attempting to adapt North Korean rockets for use as long-range missiles, corruption within the Afghan government, with concerns heightened when a senior official was found to be carrying more than $50m in cash on a foreign trip.

It includes Germany being warned in 2007 not to enforce arrest warrants for US Central Intelligence Agency officers involved in an operation in which an innocent German citizen with the same name as a suspected militant was abducted and held in Afghanistan
US officials being instructed to spy on the UN’s leadership by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The New York Times said it will publish the following in the coming days:

1. Bargaining to empty the Guant?namo 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.?

2. 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.

3. 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.

According to Guardian, the cable details the extraordinarily close relationship between Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, and Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, which is causing intense US suspicion.

It said the cables detail allegations of “lavish gifts”, lucrative energy contracts and the use by Berlusconi of a “shadowy” Russian-speaking Italiango-between.