It made the news around the world: new revelations courtesy of WikLeaks are going to shed light on secret correspondence between the U.S. State Department and various U.S. embassies around the world. Allegedly WikiLeaks is in possession of almost 3 million documents, including sensitive diplomatic cables sent to Washington from the American embassy in London.
The revelations may be include among others allegations of corruption against politicians in Russia, Afghanistan and other Central Asian nations, information on the U.K politics and documents showing that Turkey has helped Al Qaeda in Iraq.
The threat sent shivers on diplomatic world, and prompted the U.S. ambassador to Britain, Louis Susman to pay a visit to the U.K Prime Minister David Cameron to warn him about the content of the documents. Supposedly the sensitive documents contain details of secret discussions on the return of the Lockerbie bomber to Libya, among other information related to the U.K. politics.
On Wednesday, U.S. State Department’s Assistant Secretary Philip Crowley said that the possible release would “put national interests at risk.”
“We are prepared if this upcoming tranche of documents includes State Department cables. We are in touch with our posts around the world. They have begun the process of notifying governments that [the] release of documents is possible in the near future”
WikiLeaks twitters showing how the U.S. government, in anticipation of an imminent expose, is briefing its allies on what to expect.
Newspapers around the world published articles warning about the WikiLeaks documents.
Russian Kommersant daily said that the documents contain the U.S. evaluation of the political situation in Russia and the unflattering characteristics of some Russian leaders.
According to Daily Mail “ There are fears of even the most apparently trivial secrets being hugely damaging. One British official said they feared that mutual American and British contempt for the French would emerge.‘Moaning about the French was practically a sport,’ he said”
The Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz, claimed that the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv warned the country’s foreign ministry that some of the cables could concern U.S.-Israel relations.
The Washington Post reported that the files will contain allegations that the U.S. has supported the PKK, a Kurdish rebel organization that has been waging a separatist war against Turkey since 1984.
The U.S. says it has known for some time that WikiLeaks held the cables.
No one has been charged with passing them to the website, but suspicion focuses on Bradley Manning, an intelligence analyst arrested in Iraq in June and charged over an earlier leak.
As per Global Research “WikiLeaks’ founder, Australian activist Julian Assange, has no home address but he often pops up in Sweden and Iceland, where Internet anonymity is protected by laws. He is being hunted by Pentagon investigators and is suspected of releasing confidential U.S. State Department documents.
Julian Assange in July 2010
“The WikiLeaks website does not have a central office or any paid staff and its operations are run only by a small dedicated team and some 800 volunteers. Its servers are spread all over the world and do not keep logs, so governments cannot trace where the information is being sent and received from” (Global Research)
I suspect that the revelations are going to damage the international relationships to some extent. However, what I am more interested in is to read the truth about the E.U. and Middle East corruption or the deals made by the whole world with China and India or the annihilation (ethnic cleansing) of the Tibetans or the genocide in African countries. Instead of that we are going to read some embarrassing diplomatic gaffes.