WASHINGTON: Governments around the world on Saturday braced for the release of millions of potentially embarrassing US diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks as Washington raced to contain the fallout.
The whistle-blower website is expected to put online three million leaked cables covering US dealings and confidential views of countries including Australia, UK, Canada, Israel, Russia and Turkey. US diplomats skipped their Thanksgiving holiday weekend and headed to foreign ministries to stave off anger over the cables , which are internal messages that often lack the niceties diplomats voice in public. "WikiLeaks are an absolutely awful impediment to my business, which is to be able to have discussions in confidence with people.
I do not understand the motivation for releasing these documents ," said James Jeffrey, the US ambassador to Iraq. "They will not help, they will simply hurt our ability to do our work here," he said.
The top US military commander , Admiral Mike Mullen, meanwhile urged WikiLeaks to stop its "extremely dangerous" release of documents, according to a transcript of a CNN interview set to air on Sunday. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley also condemned WikiLeaks ' plans. "It will place lives and interests at risk. It is irresponsible," he said.
Secretary of state Hillary Clinton had contacted leaders in Germany, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Britain, France and Afghanistan over the issue, he added. Russia's respected Kommersant newspaper said that the documents included US diplomats' conversations with Russian politicians and "unflattering" assessments of some of them.
The website has said there would be "seven times" as many secret documents as the 400,000 Iraq war logs it published last month.
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