The latest leaks by the whistleblower website, WikiLeaks and the Guardian have caused what can be called the biggest diplomatic crisis in the last decade. The leaks, which have over 250000 dispatches reveal the US foreign strategies and more.
Few of the most shocking “secret” dispatches reveal that Arab leaders are privately urging an air strike on Iran and that US officials have been instructed to spy on the UN’s leadership.
According to the Guardian website,
Among scores of other disclosures that are likely to cause uproar, the cables detail:
– Grave fears in Washington and London over the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme
- Alleged links between the Russian government and organised crime.
- Devastating criticism of the UK’s military operations in Afghanistan.
- Claims of inappropriate behaviour by a member of the British royal family.
The cables names Saudi donors as the biggest financiers of terror groups, and provide an extraordinarily detailed account of an agreement between Washington and Yemen to cover up the use of US planes to bomb al-Qaida targets. One cable records that during a meeting in January with General David Petraeus, then US commander in the Middle East, Yemeni president Abdullah Saleh said: “We’ll continue saying they are our bombs, not yours.”
More highlights:
1) The materials have ‘pseudonyms’ of various world leaders, such as Vladimir Putin being called an “Alpha-Dog” and Hamid Karzai being “driven by paranoia”.
2) The cache of the cable contains specific corruption allegations on international leaders.
3) The view from Baku has been to target Iran
4) The cables name countries involved in financing terror groups, and describe a near “environmental disaster”.
5) Amongst other disclosures that are likely to cause uproar, the cables detail how the US believes that China was behind the hacking of search engine Google and computers of western governments.
According to the news breaking on the Guardian, “The most controversial target was the leadership of the United Nations. That directive requested the specification of telecoms and IT systems used by top UN officials and their staff and details of “private VIP networks used for official communication, to include upgrades, security measures, passwords, personal encryption keys”.
Soon after the tweets by the WikiLeaks official twitter account the website was allegedly “under-attack” and was unaccessible.
You can know all about the issue here or read the original leaked documents on Wikileaks or at the Guardian website.
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