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UK operations in Afghanistan are criticised in US State Department files released by the Wikileaks website, according to the Guardian.
It includes criticism of David Cameron and inappropriate remarks by the Duke of York about a law enforcement agency and foreign country, it says.
Publishing the files risks national security, the Foreign Office says.
However, former British ambassador to the United States Sir Christopher Meyer said the leaks were merely embarrassing and would not "make any difference at all" in political terms.
"What I do expect is in London and Washington that people would look very carefully about how they communicate electronically and protect the archive where it needs to be protected," he added.
The leaked US embassy cables reportedly include accounts of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia urging the US to bomb Iran, Afghan government corruption, Iranian attempts to modify North Korean rockets as missiles and alleged links between the Russian government and organised crime.
According to the Guardian, references to the UK include:
  • Criticism of UK operations in Afghanistan by US commanders, Afghan president Hamid Karzai and officials in Helmand, particularly around the failure to impose security around Sangin
  • Requests for intelligence about individual MPs, notably from earlier this year about Conservatives in anticipation of them forming a government, and particularly Alan Duncan - now International Development Minister
  • How the London embassy passed on intelligence about a one-time Labour minister, whose name the Guardian has withheld, referring to him as "a bit of a hound dog where women are concerned"
  • Nelson Mandela's fury when an adviser stopped him meeting Margaret Thatcher two months after his release from prison in 1990
  • Race riots in Toxteth, Handsworth and Brixton in 1985 caused then-US ambassador Raymond Seitz to draw comparisons with Charles Dickens' London
The UK Ministry of Defence had urged newspaper editors to "bear in mind" the national security implications of publishing the information, while the US government warned the leaks would threaten global counter-terrorism operations and jeopardise relations with allies.

Downing Street has condemned the leaks, saying it was important that governments could operate on the basis of confidentiality.
A spokesman made no comment about individual details but BBC political correspondent Laura Kuenssberg said No 10 was "braced for what might come next".
'Free press'
In one leaked cable, US ambassador to Kyrgyzstan Tatiana Gfoeller accuses Prince Andrew of speaking "cockily" during an official engagement in 2008, and of leading a discussion that "verged on the rude".
She wrote that he "railed against" British anti-corruption investigators probing a Saudi arms deal, and criticised France.
Buckingham Palace has not responded to the publication.
Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger defended his newspaper's publication of leaked information, saying Wikileaks would have released all of the data without redacting it.

"It's incredibly important if you have got kings and leaders of Gulf states urging America to go and bomb Iran - so we might be on the brink of yet another war - that we should know about that.
"It's not the job of the media to worry about the embarrassment of world leaders who have been caught saying different things in public or private, especially some of these Gulf states that don't have a free press."
The Guardian says it was given the contents of more than 250,000 leaked cables on a memory stick. US officials believe a 23-year-old soldier, Bradley Manning, was the source of the leak.
Wikileaks argues its previous releases shed light on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They included allegations of torture by Iraqi forces and reports that suggested 15,000 additional civilian deaths in Iraq.
BBC correspondent Jeremy Bowen said these were "the kind of documents historians normally get 25 years on" and agreed the contents of the memos would "damage America's relationship with its allies".
The Foreign Office insists its relations with Washington will not be damaged and the US ambassador in London, Louis Susman, said he was confident the relationship would remain close.
Wikileaks said it had come under attack from a computer-hacking operation hours before the publication of the extracts.

From Wikileaks
June 20, 2009
Summary
This list presents 287 internet sites currently censored by Italy. This quasi-voluntary system, which was introduced under the banner of fighting “child pornography” relies on a secret, unaccountable list of site names. Because of this lack of transparency, and the power of the censorship system, the blacklist is of intense interest.
Secret “child pornography” censorship blacklists in other countries, such as China, Thailand, Australia, Finland and Denmark have all been shown by WikiLeaks to have been corrupted into censoring non-child pornographic content, including political content (all but Denmark). It seems to be a law of human affairs that when such powerful, unaccountable, systems are introduced, they soon stray from their stated purpose.
The majority of sites on the Italian list seem to be unrelated to child pornography. While some do appear to relate to the images of teenagers, the vast majority of sites are related to what appears to be legal young-adult pornography.Some sites are unrelated to any type of pornography.
These include businesses or institutes outside of Italy, and discussion forums, used by tens of thousands for all purposes. While it is possible these sites had an unauthorized user briefly upload an underage image or link to such an image, the continued presence of the sites on this list likely reflects the lack of any censorship notification or appeal mechanism.
The Australian government admitted during a Senate estimates hearing that fewer than one third of its May 2009 blacklist was related to images of those under the age of 18.
During 2008, the government of Thailand added over 1100 pages to its censorship blacklist for “lese majeste” (criticizing the royal family).
Both the Australian and Thai blacklists have been going for a longer than the Italian system and are possibly substantially more corrupt as a result.
We checked the Italian censorship system against the top 1,000,000 most popular Internet domains (as measured by Alexa.com in November, 2008), together with selected blacklists from other countries to discover a portion of those sites censored by Italy. Botique sites and sites only recently popular do not appear in our list due to limitations in our methodology. That said, our list represents an accurate, current subset of the full list.
In Italy, blocking of content is done through DNS servers – when request for blocked site is made, user is redirected to IP 212.48.170.80 instead of original address. Two nameservers involved in the blocking are 212.48.160.5 and 212.48.160.6.
The list can be reproduced by using the Unix “dig” utility, using a command such as “dig @212.48.160.6 -f list +noall +answer” where “list” is a file containing list of domains to be checked (one per line). We then search for results which lead to IP 212.48.170.80, the site which displays the “censorship page”. This is a universal method, which can be applied to all DNS based blocking systems.


The year 2010 was not good for Google in China and the hacking was, indeed, part of a sabotage attempt carried out with help from the government quarters, reveal the classified U.S. documents released by Wikileaks on Sunday. China to Germany, US diplomacy generally smacks of quid-pro-quo dealings, as ever.

Wikileaks: China to Germany, US diplomacy smacks of quid-pro-quo dealings
GOOGLE IN CHINA:
There was a flurry of messages going out from the US embassy in Beijing quoting a contact as early as in January that the governing Politburo or the apex body of the Communit Party of China was involved in the Google case, though the Chinese government denied it. Apart from Google, 33 other companies with their offices in China, reported hacking of their computers during the period, reveal the papers. Google has moved its search engine base to Hong Kong, in order to get its Internet Content Provider license renewed, the documents indicate. Otherwise, China used hackers to access Gmail accounts of its human rights activists and they have kept track of Dalai Lama and US companies since 2002.

In other revelations, Yemen has helped the U.S. to target al Qaeda. Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh told General David Petraeus in January 2010, "We’ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours.” This helped the U.S. tide over the suspicion among the countries in the Middle East and the documents show that the Yemeni President even told a lie in parliament to cover up the US strikes.

SPYING ON UN SECRETARY-GENERAL:
US Secretary of State ordered spying on the members of the UN Security Council, officials including Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. While the credit-card numbers, flight details, official meetings, emails. cellphone numbers of the UN officials was collected as part of the project, Clinton reportedly requested details on management and decision-making style of Ban Ki-moon and his influence on the UN secretariat. Her predecessor Condoleezza Rice too made similar requests on the UN personnel in July 2009. These revelations show that the United States deprived the world body of its independence and no-interference obligations under a 1946 treaty.
PLEA FOR ATTACK ON IRAN:
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah had asked the U.S. repeatedly in 2008 to attack Iran, saying “cut off the head of the snake”. He was suspicious with Iran's controversial nuclear program and called for “severe U.S. and international sanctions on Iran.” Saudi Arabia was not alone as Israel too pressed for action against Iran. In a message sent in June 2009, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak had estimated that in 6 to 18 months it would be possible to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Other documents show that Iran might have also acquired advanced missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads from North Korea.
GUANTANAMO DETAINEES:
U.S. officials were so anxious to send back Guantanamo prisoners that they struck deals with many island nations in the Pacific, show the documents.They offered millions of dollars to Kiribati to provide shelter to the detainees who are of Chinese Muslim origin. They also offered Slovenia to accept a prisoner in return for a meeting with President Barack Obama. They told Belgium that in return for taking these prisoners, it would be allowed to grow in prominence in Europe. German Ambassador Michael Schaefer informed China of the U.S. request to accept some Uighur detainees and had been subsequently warned by China of "a heavy burden on bilateral relations" if Germany were to accept any detainees, says another cable.
KOREAN REUNIFICATION:
South Korea and the U.S. had discussed Korean reunification plans in February 2010, in case the communit regime in the North collapses. But China, as is ever, was an obstacle for both. The prime interest was to keep a united Korea in alliance with the United States.
GERMANY'S MERKEL:
The German Chancellor Angela Merkel was criticized in one of the documents by former U.S. envoy William Timken for not taking "bold steps yet to improve the substantive content of the relationship.” Merkel was perceived as “risk averse and rarely creative” in a 2008 message. German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle was found “short on substance,” in these documents.
BERLUSCONI'S 'SHADOWY' TIES WITH PUTIN:
On Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was described as "freckless, vain, and ineffective as a modern Europen leader" by U.S. envoy Elizabeth Dibble in one document while his relationship with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was found "shadowy" in another. Clinton wanted the envoys in the two nations to watch out for any business dealings between the two.
INDIA & AFGHAN TALKS:
US was keen to rope in India in Afghan talks, despite Turkish opposition citing Pakistan's objection. But the Bahrain King was positive on Indian involvement in Afghanistan. US also used India's opinion in its Voice of America broadcasts to Iran as a leader in the Nonaligned Movement, the paper show. Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna, had however, said that India was not worried about the leaks though he wanted to know the contents.
PAKISTAN'S NUCLEAR PROGRAM:
The US has had a standoff over the use of enriched uranium in Pakistan and since 2007 it was mounting pressure on Islamabad to, say messages sent by US ambassador Anne W. Patterson in May 2009. He complained 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". The documents show that the US is still unsure about real partners in Pakistan to wage a war against al Qaeda bases. It also notes that a lurking rickshaw driver in Lahore might be watching the US consulate.
HOW BRAZIL TACKLES TERRORISTS?
A cable sent by US Ambassador Clifford Sobel says the police and intelligence agencies had arrested some individuals with links to terrorism but charged them "on a variety of non-terrorism related crimes to avoid calling attention of the media and the higher levels of the government." Most of them are charged under anti-narcotics and anti-smuggling acts, the message Wikileaks documents reveals. Brazil minister for intelligence Jorge Armando Felix, who met the ambassador in May 2005, was quoted to have said that Brazil was asking moderate, second generation Arabs, "to keep a close eye on fellow Arabs who may be influenced by Arab extremists and/or terrorist groups". It was in their own interest that the entire Arab community in the country is not brought under radar, he reportedly told the ambassador. Brazil denies the existence of counter-terrorism operations.


France has not done enough to integrate its ethnic and religious minorities and needs to give Muslims a place in mainstream society, U.S. diplomats said in leaked cables published on Wednesday by a French newspaper.

Burning vehicles in FranceComments in diplomatic cables released by whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks and published by the daily Le Monde show frustration over France's record in assimilating minority groups and highlight concerns the problem could be deepening.
"France not only has a problem with integration or immigration; it also needs to act to give Muslims a sense of French identity," the U.S. embassy in Paris said in a secret diplomatic cable to Washington dated Aug. 17, 2005.
The comments foreshadowed a wave of violent clashes in December that year between youths, many of them second-generation immigrants, and police in the gritty suburban housing projects that ring major French cities.
Television footage of burning cars and rioting youths was beamed around the world, casting a spotlight on tension between the French government and descendants of immigrant groups, many of whom belonged to France's 5-million-strong Muslim community.
"The real problem is the failure of white Christian France to view its dark-skinned and Muslim compatriots as citizens in their own right," the U.S. embassy told Washington in a cable dated Nov. 9, 2005. Craig Stapleton was U.S. ambassador to France under the administration of President George W. Bush.
A succession of WikiLeaks releases has exposed the inner workings of U.S. diplomacy and revealed at times frank views of foreign leaders, prompting charges of irresponsibility from countries including France.
The cables published by Le Monde date back to mid-2005 and cover the presidencies of both Mr Bush and Barack Obama, but there is little variation in U.S. attitudes toward France and its policies on immigrants and minorities.
"French institutions appear insufficiently flexible for a population that is growing more diverse," said a cable from Jan. 2010. Charles Rivkin is currently U.S. ambassador to France.
President Nicolas Sarkozy pledged to smooth relations with descendants of immigrants when he came to power in 2007. He renamed the immigration ministry to add the words "national identity" and encouraged debate on what it meant to be French.
His efforts did not hold up. In the wake of controversy over his expulsion of Roma migrants last summer, the immigration ministry was absorbed into the interior ministry and Sarkozy said efforts to promote national identity had been "misunderstood".
U.S. diplomats said in the cables that France would suffer if it failed to build closer ties with minorities.
"We believe that if France, over the long term, does not succeed in improving prospects for its minorities and give them true political representation, it could become weaker, more divided and perhaps inclined toward crises ... and a less effective ally as a result," said the cable from Jan. 2010.

The Swedish government asked American officials to keep intelligence-gathering “informal” to help avoid Parliamentary scrutiny, American diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks show.


The secret cables, seen by The Daily Telegraph, disclose how Swedish officials wanted discussions about anti-terrorism operations kept from public scrutiny.
They describe how officials from the Swedish Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Foreign Affairs had a “strong degree of satisfaction with current informal information sharing arrangements” with the American government.
Making the arrangement formal would result in the need for it to be disclosed to Parliament, they said.
They disclose officials’ fear that intense Swedish Parliamentary scrutiny could place “a wide range of law enforcement and anti-terrorism” operations in jeopardy.
Under the heading “teams visits to discuss terrorist screening information exchange with Sweden”, they show Dr Anna-Karin Svensson, Director of the Division for Police Issues, saying the Swedish government would strike controversy if its intelligence methods were disclosed.

The cable claimed that the "current Swedish political climate makes any formal terrorist screening information agreement highly difficult". Swedish citizens are said to place high value on the country’s neutrality.
"The MOJ team expressed their appreciation for the flexibility of the U.S. side in regards to memorialising any agreement," said the cable.
"They expressed a strong degree of satisfaction with current informal information sharing arrangements with the U.S., and wondered whether the putative advantages of an HSPD-6 agreement for Sweden would be offset by the risk that these existing informal channels, which cover a wide range of law enforcement and anti-terrorism co-operation, would be scrutinised more intensely by Parliament and perhaps jeopardised.
"Dr. Svensson reiterated MFA concerns about the current political atmosphere in Sweden."
It continued: "She believed that, given Swedish constitutional requirements to present matters of national concern to Parliament and in light of the ongoing controversy over Sweden's recently passed surveillance law, it would be politically impossible for the Minister of Justice to avoid presenting any formal data sharing agreement with the United States to Parliament for review.
"In her opinion, the effect of this public spotlight could also place other existing informal information sharing arrangements at jeopardy."
The publication of the new cables, sent to Washington from the American embassy in Stockholm in 2008, came after Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder, was granted bail on Tuesday over sexual assault claims in Sweden.
Despite a judge ordering his release with strict conditions and £200,000 guarantee from high profile supporters, the Swedish authorities appealed, meaning the 39 year-old remains behind bars.
Wikileaks claimed the new cables, which discuss terrorist screening programs, added weight to suggestions that Sweden and America were engaged in “back room deals”.
Mark Stephens, Mr Assange’s lawyer, has claimed his client was facing a “show trial” and his case was politically motivated. The Swedish government denies the claims.
Kristinn Hrafnsson, a Wikileaks spokesman, said that the website was “concerned about political influence on the prosecution of Julian Assange”.
“The new revelations contained in the Swedish cables … shed some light on the ferocity of the Swedish prosecutorial process in this case,” he said.
“The prosecutor has said there is ‘no condition’ for bail that will satisfy them.”

Communication and Information Technology Minister Tifatul Sembiring had assigned a team to collect diplomatic documents leaked by whistleblowing website WikiLeaks related to Indonesia. And the results of the study would be submitted to theCoordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs Djoko Suyanto.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said the Indonesian government was cooperating with the US Embassy in Jakarta and the Indonesian Embassy inWashington to monitor the leaked documents.
Wikileaks and Indonesia Diplomatic Documents
Wikileaks and Indonesia (novinite.com)

Wikileaks and Indonesia Diplomatic Documents

Mines and Tin factories near the Straits of Malacca, Indonesia, is considered vital to the interests of the United States (U.S.). In addition, Washington also marks a number of resources and other strategic locations in the foreign country noteworthy for the interests of America.
According to a secret memo issued by the U.S. State Department. The memo was created on February 18, 2009 and berkatagori secret, which eventually leaked on page WikiLeaks on December 5, 2010.

Secret diplomatic wires from the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta who leaked WikiLeaks will increasingly bright. WikiLeaks reveals, there is a terrorism-related wire issued 4 days before the bombing at the JW Marriott on July 17, 2009.
If the U.S. Embassy has issued a diplomatic wire about terrorism, 4 days before the JW Marriott exploded, the U.S. already knows what is it mean there will be a terrorist attack? It was only to be answered if the document was released entirely by WikiLeaks.
WikiLeaks is currently in the spotlight due to release a wire Cablegate or U.S. diplomatic scandal. There are 251,287 documents, including the 3059 document from the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta and 167 documents from the U.S. consulate general in Surabaya. Document to be leaked from the U.S. representative in Indonesia, starting from the Soeharto government on November 19, 1990 to SBY government on February 27, 2010.

QUITO, Ecuador — If WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange needs a home, Ecuador's deputy foreign minister says this Andean nation is happy to provide one.
The 39-year-old Australian, who has incensed and embarrassed Washington with the release by his online whistle-blowing organization of hundreds of sensitive diplomatic cables, had sought residency and a work permit in Sweden.
Assange EcuadorBut after the release by WikiLeaks beginning in late July of thousands of sensitive documents from the Iraq and Afghan wars, a Swedish court ordered him detained for questioning on sexual assault allegations – claims Assange denies and calls part of a smear campaign.
Assange, who keeps his whereabouts secret and moves around a lot, could also face legal complications at home. Australia's attorney general said Monday that it was studying whether he'd broken any laws there.
In contrast to the potential hostility from U.S. allies, leftist-run Ecuador provided Assange with an invitation Monday.
Deputy Foreign Minister Kintto Lucas said in audio posted online by the EcuadorInmediato news site that "we are open to giving him residence in Ecuador, without any kind of trouble and without any kind of conditions."
"We think it would be important not only to converse with him but to listen to him," Lucas added, saying Ecuador wanted to invite Assange to "freely expound" and see what it's like in "friendly countries."
He praised people like Assange "who are constantly investigating and trying to get light out of the dark corners of (state) information"
Lucas said Ecuador's government was "very concerned" by revelations that U.S. diplomats have been involved in spying in the first of the more than 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables and directives that WikiLeaks has begun to release.
WikLeaks says it has 1,621 cables that originated in the U.S. Embassy in Quito. Their contents have not yet been disclosed.
Ecuador expelled two U.S. diplomats in early 2009, accusing one of directing CIA operations in Ecuador and another of interferring in police affairs.
The government continues close counternarcotics cooperation with the United States, but a year ago President Rafael Correa, a U.S.-educated economist, refused to renew the lease on what had been Washington's only base for counternarcotics flights in South America, the Manta airfield.
He said that if Washington would grant Ecuador an air base in Florida, he'd be happy to host U.S. flight operations.

India lobbied the US against imposing sanctions on Iran for trying to develop nuclear weapons while it expressed concern over the emergence of Bangladesh and the Gulf countries as terrorist-funding routes into India, according to a latest batch of US diplomatic cables leaked by whilstleblower site WikiLeaks.
The two countries also explored the possibility of an Indian troop deployment in Afghanistan to prevent the country falling again to Pakistan-based elements, the documents revealed.
“The imposition of sanctions punishes ordinary people, who then turn their anger outward.. We are cautious about adhering to a broad attack on Iran,” India’s national security adviser MK Narayanan told senators Russ Feingold and Bob Casey, according to a cable sent from the New Delhi embassy to the secretary of state in 2008. The issue of the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons programme had been a sore point in diplomatic relations between the two, with considerable speculation in international and domestic circles about whether the Manmohan Singh government had secretly capitulated to the US efforts to bring on economic sanctions against Iran, a traditional Indian ally.
Contrary to fears, however, Narayanan came across as trying hard to disabuse the Americans of their notion that Iran was yet another hot-bed of Islamist terrorism.
According to the cable, Narayanan told the senators that Shia clergy are more “sophisticated and erudite” than their Sunni counterparts and sanctions on Iran will only worsen the US’s case. Pointing to the self-flagellation ritual performed during Muharram, Narayanan said the Iranian psyche had “a tremendous capacity” to absorb punishment. “Self-flagellation comes to them naturally,” he is quoted as saying, while trying to discourage the senators from advocating sanctions.
Another cable reveals India’s deep-seated fears of a US ‘abandonment’ of Pakistan and the “deep trouble” that it will cause to India itself.
In a chat with US counter-terrorism official Virginia Palmer, former Indian high commissioner to Pakistan, G Parthasarathy and other officials are portrayed as being extremely worried about any US scaling down in Afghanistan. They, however, were all for the US exit from Iraq.
“The cost of losing Afghanistan is too great for India,” Parthasarathy is quoted as saying. When asked if India would consider putting troops on the ground in northern Afghanistan, Parthasarathy responded that it would depend on “how it’s politically played,” acknowledging that the idea has some strategic value, the cable went on


North Korea attempted to reach out to the United States through Mongolia in 2009, suggesting that the Mongolians host disarmament talks between Washington and Pyongyang, American diplomats reported in a document obtained by the website WikiLeaks.
A Mongolian diplomat passed that information to the U.S. Embassy in Ulaan Baatar after an August 2009 meeting with Kim Yong Il, North Korea's vice foreign minister, a leaked embassy cable recounts. "There are no eternal enemies in this world," the Mongolian official quoted Kim as saying.
"VFM Kim said the DPRK is spending too much on weapons rather than on its children, but that the current reality dictates that they cannot get away from weapons for now," the cable states, using shorthand for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. "Kim said the DPRK is not a threat and was only interested in self-protection."
The document is among the vast cache that the website WikiLeaks began releasing Sunday to widespread condemnation from the United States and its allies.
The Mongolian diplomat who recounted the meeting described it as "notable" since the North Koreans "did not read from a prepared script, they were not aggressive and made no criticism of the United States, and they criticized China and Russia 'three or four times' for supporting recent U.N. resolutions aimed at the DPRK," the cable states.
The North Koreans repeated their insistence that they would not return to the six-party regional talks aimed at convincing Pyongyang against dismantling its nuclear weapons program, according to the document. As they had in the past, they indicated that they wanted to discuss disarmament and the normalization of relations with Washington in one-on-one talks, which an embassy official suggested could be held in Mongolia, according to the Mongolian diplomat.
The cable quotes Kim as saying that former President Clinton's visit to North Korea "has greatly improved the prospects for such talks." Clinton had gone to Pyongyang a week earlier to retrieve two American journalists held on charges of entering the country illegally.

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