WASHINGTON, Nov 25: The United States is reported to have warned Pakistan that it tops a list of countries that may be affected by an expected leak of secret documents by a whistleblowers’ website.
On Wednesday, the Obama administration said that it had alerted Congress and begun notifying foreign governments that the WikiLeaks website was preparing to release sensitive US diplomatic files later this week that could damage US relations with friends and allies across the globe.
US officials who spoke to the media about the expected leaks warned that the documents may also contain “unpleasant facts” about US policies in the Pak-Afghan region.
Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan are on the list of countries which the US worry might be affected by the leak, but the State Department was paying equal attention to countries such as Zimbabwe, the department’s spokesman P.J. Crowley said.
“We are prepared for the worst – and the worst is that this will have an impact on our diplomatic relations with many, many countries,” he said. “They are going to create tension in relationships between our diplomats and our friends around the world.” Mr Crowley told reporters at the State Department that US diplomatic outposts across the world had begun the process of notifying other governments of the impending leak.
“This is going to be potentially global in its impact,” Mr Crowley added. “You’re talking hundreds of thousands of cables that touch on relationships with hundreds countries.” Diplomatic cables can include anything from research ahead of delegations, to readouts of high-level meetings and analysis of emerging events.
The Pentagon, still reeling over the 700,000 secret Afghan war documents exposed by WikiLeaks in late October, said on Wednesday it won’t go unscathed in this new release.
“There are some Department of Defence related issues in these cables,” Pentagon Spokesman Col. David Lapan said. Congressional officials told Fox News there’s a specific concern in the Pentagon that the documents contain potentially damaging information about Guantanamo detainees.
As part of its damage control effort, the US has warned the Canadian government that the leak may contain accounts of compromising conversations with dissidents and friendly politicians, which could result in the expulsion of US diplomats.
Reports in the US media say that the leak may also include a document showing that the
US helped the PKK, a Kurdish rebel organisation which has been waging a separatist war against Turkey since 1984 and has been classified by the State Department as a terrorist organisation since 1979. Another document, a US military report, charges Turkey with failing to control its borders, because Iraqi citizens residing in Turkey provided Al Qaeda with supplies to build bombs, guns and ammunition.
The US military documents call the PKK “warriors for freedom and Turkish citizens”, and say that the US set free arrested PKK members in Iraq. The documents also point out that US forces in Iraq have given weapons to the PKK and ignored the organisation’s operations inside Turkey.
Dawn ePaper
