Wiki Leaks

The US ambassador to Germany, Philip Murphy, sought Wednesday to stem the diplomatic damage from awkward cables on WikiLeaks, calling the maligned foreign minister "a friend".

Amid demands for his sacking, Murphy called the release of the documents featuring frank opinions about German leaders "embarrassing and deeply uncomfortable", in an interview with people magazine Bunte.

In cables from Berlin signed by Murphy, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, who is also Germany's vice chancellor, comes in for the most withering criticism, branded incompetent, vain and critical of America.

But Murphy insisted his relations with Westerwelle had not suffered.

"He is a true friend," Murphy is quoted as saying. "I have great respect for him. These comments are only snapshots and do not take the entire picture, the great German-American film, into account. Guido Westerwelle knows this."

Murphy, a former Goldman Sachs executive and a major fundraiser for US President Barack Obama, has faced calls from deputies from Westerwelle's Free Democrats for Washington to recall him.

Merkel's spokesman said Friday that the government did not share these views, calling US-German ties "robust".

Meanwhile comments by Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle in which he compared the vast collection of US diplomatic cables with the practice of the despised East German Stasi secret police of keeping copious records on its citizens sparked a barrage of critical questions at a government briefing Wednesday.

"Some of what I read on WikiLeaks reminds me of the collecting mania that former institutions in the East, including the Stasi, had," Bruederle told a conference Tuesday.

A ministry spokeswoman said Bruederle intended to criticise WikiLeaks' practices, not the United States.

The government was considering using helicopters to spray water over the Fukushima site to limit the spread of radioactive particles as part of its increasingly desperate attempts to keep the situation under control.

Meanwhile the FTSE-100 share index fell by 1.4 per cent as stock markets around the world slumped in response to a 10.6 per cent drop in Japan's Nikkei index.

Warnings about the safety of nuclear power plants in Japan, one of the most seismologically active countries in the world, were raised during a meeting of the G8's Nuclear Safety and Security Group in Tokyo in 2008.

A US embassy cable obtained by the WikiLeaks website and seen by The Daily Telegraph quoted an unnamed expert who expressed concern that guidance on how to protect nuclear power stations from earthquakes had only been updated three times in the past 35 years.

The document states: "He [the IAEA official] explained that safety guides for seismic safety have only been revised three times in the last 35 years and that the IAEA is now re-examining them.

"Also, the presenter noted recent earthquakes in some cases have exceeded the design basis for some nuclear plants, and that this is a serious problem that is now driving seismic safety work."

The cables also disclose how the Japanese government opposed a court order to shut down another nuclear power plant in western Japan because of concerns it could not withstand powerful earthquakes.

The court ruled that there was a possibility local people might be exposed to radiation if there was an accident at the plant, which was built to out of date specifications and only to withstand a "6.5 magnitude" earthquake. Last Friday's earthquake, 81 miles off the shore of Japan, was a magnitude 9.0 tremor.

However, a cable from March 2006 reported that the court's concerns were not shared by the country's nuclear safety agency.

It says: "Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency believes the reactor is safe and that all safety analyses were appropriately conducted."

The Government successfully overturned the ruling in 2009.

Another cable reported to Washington local concerns that a new generation of Japanese power stations that recycle nuclear fuel were jeopardising safety.

The cable, quoting a local newspaper, reports: "There is something precarious about the way all electric power companies are falling in step with each other under the banner of the national policy. We have seen too many cases of cost reduction competition through heightened efficiency jeopardizing safety."

The cables also disclose how Taro Kono, a high-profile member of Japan's lower house, told US diplomats in October 2008 that the government was "covering up" nuclear accidents.

He alleged that the government was ignoring alternative forms of energy, such as wind power.

The cable states: "He also accused METI [the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry] of covering up nuclear accidents, and obscuring the true costs and problems associated with the nuclear industry." He added that the Japan's "extensive seismic" activity raised safety concerns about storing nuclear material.

Mr Kan was not in office at the time the nuclear warnings were made. He became science and technology minister in 2009 and prime minister in June 2010.

"The leak is extremely awkward for the U.S. embassy in Berlin, and it's bound to sour personal relations between U.S. officials and German politicians," says Volker Perthes, director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. "It's also damaging for the U.S. State Department, as from now on it will get fewer frank assessments from German officials and politicians."(See the top 10 leaks.)

Perhaps the harshest criticism is reserved for Merkel's Vice-Chancellor, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, who in various memos is slammed as incompetent, vain and critical of the U.S. On Sept. 18, 2009, just days before German's federal election, the U.S. embassy sent a cable calling Westerwelle "opportunistic" and "arrogant and too fixated on maintaining his 'cult of personality' " and saying he had little experience in foreign policy. In a document dated Feb. 4, 2010, Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg is reported to have told U.S. Ambassador Murphy that Westerwelle was "the single biggest obstacle" to a request from the U.S. for more German troops in Afghanistan.

In fact, Guttenberg is virtually the only German minister to emerge from the revelations untainted. Described as a "close and well-known friend of the U.S.," the affable politician is praised for being a "foreign policy expert and transatlanticist." Meanwhile, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble is unflatteringly noted as being "neurotic" and "an angry old man."(See more on WikiLeaks.)

Der Spiegel called the publication of the confidential information a "disaster for U.S. diplomacy," while the mass-market daily Bild said the revelations were a "political earthquake." As Germany's political establishment braces itself for more embarrassing revelations, ministers have been forced onto the defensive. At a news conference on Monday, Westerwelle told reporters that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had called him on Friday to express her "deep regret" about the imminent leak. And German government officials are desperately trying to reassure the Obama Administration that U.S.-German relations are still on track. On Monday, Merkel spokesman Steffen Seibert insisted to reporters that ties between the two countries were "firm" and "robust" and would not be harmed.

While many analysts say the leaked memos will not affect the main areas of cooperation between Berlin and Washington — over Iran or climate change, for example — the candid comments about German politicians have gone down like a lead balloon. "This will be damaging," said Ruprecht Polenz, a member of Merkel's CDU party, to public broadcaster ZDF on Monday, adding that Washington would have to reassure its allies that it can be trusted and that the Obama Administration must review its security measures. "The revelations are embarrassing — because they make classified cables public, and not because of their content," says Constanze Stelzenmüller, senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Berlin. "A lot of the assessments of German policymakers seem accurate. I suspect they are widely shared in Berlin."(See pictures of the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall.)

As the man whose name often appears on the leaked memos, U.S. Ambassador Murphy has had to do the rounds on TV to try to calm the media storm. "This is completely and utterly irresponsible," he fumed during an interview with ZDF on Monday, admitting there would be "bumps in the road and broken china" in the days ahead.

It's still too early to predict the long-term consequences of the latest WikiLeaks revelations, but one thing is clear: in the future, German politicians will probably think twice about confiding in U.S. officials. As former U.S. ambassador to Germany John Kornblum told ZDF on Monday, "If that trust is broken, as is now the case, then of course you need to start back at zero." Hardly a tantalizing prospect for Germany's diplomatic corps.

An independent investigation into Switzerland's wartime past has published a report which concludes that the country largely ignored moral and ethical issues.

The Bergier Commission, which was set up in 1996 by the Swiss parliament to examine Swiss relations with the Axis powers, claims that the Swiss authorities had secret dealings with Nazi Germany which helped to prolong the second world war.

In February of last year, U.S. diplomatic posts were given one month by Washington to compile and forward an inventory of critical infrastructure and key resources in their respective reporting areas “whose loss could critically impact the public health, economic security, and/or national and homeland security of the United States.” The U.S. embassy in Ottawa – and the string of American consulates across Canada – were included in this “action request.”

Yesterday, WikiLeaks – presumably at the direction of its increasingly besieged leader – struck back at its American tormentors by posting on its website the diplomatic cable that includes the requested compilation.

Behind its pay-wall, the Times of London, which fronts the story, reports that “Sir Malcolm Rifkind, a former British Defence and Foreign Secretary and chairman of the Commons Intelligence and Security Committee, said WikiLeaks had made no credible attempt to find out whether the material could assist terrorists.

‘This is further evidence that they have been generally irresponsible, bordering on criminal. This is the kind of information terrorists are interested in knowing’.

But WikiLeaks said that the document, approved by Hillary Clinton, provided further evidence that the U.S. Administration was hoarding sensitive information on countries without their knowledge….

Kristinn Hrafnsson, a spokesman for the website, said: “This further undermines claims made by the US Government that its embassy officials do not play an intelligence-gathering role.”

Not surprisingly given that we share a continent, the U.S. compilation of critical infrastructure and key resources in foreign countries includes many sites and undertakings in Canada, from Nova Scotia to British Columbia. Dams; undersea cables; oil and gas pipelines; border crossings, including bridges; nuclear power plants; defence production factories; mines; and, last but not least, pharmaceutical and vaccine production plants.

While, there has been considerable sympathy to date for WikiLeaks and for Mr. Assange, I suspect that some of this might erode once Canadians get a look at this latest cable, which is now widely available, and which sets out the juiciest targets in Canada for those looking to do harm to the United States. Moreover, once Canadians have had a chance to examine the list of sites it includes, I doubt that many of our compatriots will conclude that its compilation by U.S. diplomats serving in this country amounts to anything remotely connected to what we understand to constitute espionage:

Canada: Hibernia Atlantic undersea cable landing Halifax , Nova Scotia, Canada James Bay Power Project, Quebec: monumental hydroelectric power development Mica Dam, British Columbia: Failure would impact the Columbia River Basin. Hydro Quebec, Quebec: Critical irreplaceable source of power to portions of Northeast U. S. Robert Moses/Robert H. Saunders Power, Ontario: Part of the St. Lawrence Power Project, between Barnhart Island, New York, and Cornwall, Ontario Seven Mile Dam, British Columbia: Concrete gravity dam between two other hydropower dams along the Pend d'Oreille River Pickering Nuclear Power Plant, Ontario, Canada Chalk River Nuclear Facility, Ontario: Largest supplier of medical radioisotopes in the world Hydrofluoric Acid Production Facility, Allied Signal, Amherstburg, Ontario Enbridge Pipeline Alliance Pipeline: Natural gas transmission from Canada Maritime and Northeast Pipeline: Natural gas transmission from Canada Transcanada Gas: Natural gas transmission from Canada Alexandria Bay POE, Ontario: Northern border crossing Ambassador Bridge POE, Ontario: Northern border crossing Blaine POE, British Columbia: Northern border crossing Blaine Washington Rail Crossing, British Columbia Blue Water Bridge POE, Ontario: Northern border crossing Champlain POE, Quebec: Northern border crossing CPR Tunnel Rail Crossing, Ontario (Michigan Central Rail Crossing) International Bridge Rail Crossing, Ontario International Railway Bridge Rail Crossing Lewiston-Queenstown POE, Ontario: Northern border crossing Peace Bridge POE, Ontario: Northern border crossing Pembina POE, Manitoba: Northern border crossing North Portal Rail Crossing, Saskatchewan St. Claire Tunnel Rail Crossing, Ontario Waneta Dam, British Columbia: Earthfill/concrete hydropower dam Darlington Nuclear Power Plant, Ontario, Canada. E-ONE Moli Energy, Maple Ridge, Canada: Critical to production of various military application electronics General Dynamics Land Systems – Canada, London Ontario, Canada: Critical to the production of the Stryker/USMC LAV Vehicle Integration Raytheon Systems Canada Ltd. ELCAN Optical Technologies Division, Midland, Ontario, Canada: Critical to the production of the AGM-130 Missile Thales Optronique Canada, Inc., Montreal, Quebec: Critical optical systems for ground combat vehicles Germanium Mine Graphite Mine Iron Ore Mine Nickel Mine Niobec Mine, Quebec, Canada: Niobium Cangene, Winnipeg, Manitoba: Plasma Sanofi Pasteur Ltd., Toronto, Canada: Polio virus vaccine GlaxoSmithKile Biologicals, North America, Quebec, Canada: Pre-pandemic influenza vaccines.