Wiki Leaks

North Korea has provided Iran with new, more capable missiles, US diplomats at the UN are seeking intelligence on allies and Washington is deeply concerned about loose nuclear material in Pakistan, according to documents released on Sunday in the world’s biggest leak.

WikiLeaks’ release of the first batch of about 250,000 US diplomatic cables lays bare US dealings with the rest of the world and Washington’s assessments of foreign leaders.

It left Barack Obama’s administration scrambling to limit the damage.

The Guardian, which along with the New York Times, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and El País had advance sight of the documents, claims that they contain “devastating criticism” of British military operations in Afghanistan as well as criticism of David Cameron, prime minister, before the general election.

It also reports what it says are “highly critical private remarks” by Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, about Mr Cameron and chancellor George Osborne’s “lack of depth”.

The cables indicate that Iran has obtained 19 BM-25 missiles from North Korea with a range of 2,000 miles – sufficient to hit western Europe – and highlight Arab calls for a military attack on Tehran. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is quoted as calling for an attack to “cut off the head of the snake”.

Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, the Iranian president, on Monday disputed however that the allegations would hurt ties with the country’s neighbours and accused the US of orchestrating the affair. “We don’t think this information was leaked. We think it was organised to be released on a regular basis and they are pursuing political goals,” he said.

The reports also recount instructions for US diplomats to obtain sensitive information for intelligence agencies, including credit card numbers, on their counterparts in the UN and elsewhere. They add that the US has tried since 2007 to remove weapons-grade uranium from a Pakistani research reactor, out of fear that it could be used for a bomb.

“These cables could compromise private discussions with foreign governments and opposition leaders,” said the White House, in an acknowledgement that the leak is likely to have more fall-out than WikiLeaks’ previous releases of papers on the Iraq and Afghan wars.

Indeed, the latest batch of documents include a description of Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s president, as “driven by paranoia”. Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president’s half-brother, is described as “widely understood to be corrupt” – although another dispatch mentions his offer to take a lie-detector test to prove his innocence.

“When the substance of private conversations is printed on the front pages of newspapers across the world, it can deeply impact not only US foreign policy interests, but those of our allies and friends around the world”.

It described the “field reporting” in the cables as candid and not an expression of policy.

Private Bradley Manning, a former US military intelligence official, is awaiting trial for passing classified information to WikiLeaks.

Franco Frattini, Italy’s foreign minister, called the Wikileaks dump the “9/11 of diplomacy”, while Silvio Berlusconi, prime minister, was reported to have laughed at cables from the US embassy in Rome which described him as “feckless, vain and ineffective” and worried about his lack of sleep after “wild parties”.

Italian media were rather disappointed by the lack of headline-grabbing material. The most embarrassing revelation to emerge so far was the unsurprising appraisal of Mr Berlusconi as the European megaphone of Russia’s Vladimir Putin with whom he exchanged expensive gifts.

The US cables, according to WikiLeaks, reveal how American diplomats have privately delivered caustic judgments on a number of world leaders in recent times:

On Vladimir Putin, Russian prime minister, and Dmitry Medvedev, Russian president, the US embassy in Moscow wired in 2008 that Mr Medvedev “plays Robin to Mr Putin’s Batman”.

Kim Jong-il, the reclusive dictator of North Korea, is described as a “flabby old chap” and someone who had suffered “physical and psychological trauma” as a result of his stroke.

Nicolas Sarkozy, French president is decsribed by the US embassy in Paris as having a “thin-skinned and authoritarian personal style”.

Silvio Berlusconi, Italian prime minister, is described by the US charge d’affaires in Rome as “feckless, vain, and ineffective as a modern European leader”.

Hamid Karzai, Afghan president is described by US diplomats in Kabul as “an extremely weak man who did not listen to facts but was instead easily swayed by anyone who came to report even the most bizarre stories or plots against him”.

Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, is branded “the crazy old man” by Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, South Africa’s international relations and co-operation minister, according to a cable from Pretoria.

Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, is described as “just strange”, according to an adviser to Sultan Qaboos of Oman.

Binyamin Netanyahu, Israeli prime minister, is “elegant and charming” but never keeps his promises, according to a cable from Cairo.