Middle East Diary With reports swirling that a third document-dump by the Internet organization WikiLeaks could be imminent – and might reveal confidential comments by foreign leaders about their governments – American diplomats are in damage-control mode. The Washington Post reported today that the new round of secret U.S. military documents “could reveal that senior government officials in other countries are the sources of embarrassing information about the inner workings of those governments, thus making it more difficult for the State Department to obtain such intelligence in the future.”
With Iraq beginning a sensitive and high-stakes month of negotiations over a new government that would run the country for the next four years, U.S. officials here are worried about what secrets the new leaks could reveal. In a briefing with foreign correspondents this morning, the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, Jim Jeffrey, called WikiLeaks “an absolutely awful impediment to my business, which is to be able to have discussions in confidence with people.”
Responding to a question from a reporter from The New York Times – which WikiLeaks has provided with an advance look at the documents the last two times – Jeffrey said the documents “simply hurt our ability to do our work here.”
He didn’t elaborate, but anything that embarrasses the two lynchpins of the new Iraqi government – prime minister-designate Nouri al Maliki and secular Shiite leader Iyad Allawi – could damage U.S. efforts to bolster the talks, to say nothing of discussions on the future American military presence in Iraq and other sensitive questions.
Jeffrey said that Iraqi leaders would be angered by WikiLeaks, too. “Anybody who has confidential discussions (that) find their way into print is going to be very, very unhappy,” he said.
The documents could be released as early as this weekend.
Australia Broadcasting Corporation Whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks has released 250,000 diplomatic cables detailing the candid conversations between Washington and embassies around the world.
They include reports that Chinese government operatives have waged a coordinated campaign of computer sabotage targeting the US and its allies, and information the Saudi king urged the United States to attack Iran and destroy its nuclear program.
The leaked memos, published by five major newspapers, including The New York Times and The Guardian, show King Abdullah bin Abd al-Aziz told the US 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”.
But a response from the Pentagon said any military action would only delay Iran’s production of a nuclear weapon by a few years.
The documents also show Saudi donors remain chief financiers of militant groups like Al Qaeda.
Other cables include details of how:
- US intelligence believes Iran has obtained advanced missiles from North Korea capable of striking Europe.
- Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh admits covering up US military strikes on Al Qaeda in Yemen by claiming they are carried out by Yemeni forces.
- A US diplomat told the State Department that German chancellor Angela Merkel is “risk averse and rarely creative”.
- Since 2007 the US 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.
- Afghanistan’s vice-president Ahmed Zia Massoud was carrying $US52 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” when he visited the United Arab Emirates last year.
- Slovenia was told to take a prisoner from Guantanamo Bay if it wanted to meet with US president Barack Obama.
- In another case, accepting more prisoners was described as “a low-cost way for Belgium to attain prominence in Europe”.
