WikiLeaks US embassy cables: live updates
• Latest leaks show China ready to abandon North Korea
• Prince Andrew's sweary outbursts at media and French
• Hillary Clinton leads international condemnation of leaks
• Prince Andrew's sweary outbursts at media and French
• Hillary Clinton leads international condemnation of leaks
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4.42pm: Meanwhile, former president Jimmy Carter popped up on MSNBC last night to dispute Hillary Clinton's claim that the US embassy cables had hurt international diplomacy:
"I don't agree with Secretary Clinton that it's that significant it has torn up the fabric for our diplomacy," Carter said. "In the future, there's going to be a lot more caution as leaders send them dispatches into the State Department and as our own ambassadors send reports back into the State Department if they suspect that their words might be revealed."
4.26pm: While there's a lot of talk about the damage these cables might do, NBC's Michael Isikoff has highlighted a case where the leaked information will be used as "a recruiting and propaganda tool" by al-Qaida. This is the revelation that the Yemeni government covered up the American role in missile strikes that killed 41 civilians, including 14 women and 21 children. Isikoff reports:
"President Saleh's comments will be translated and used over and over again by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) as a recruiting and propaganda tool," Gregory Johnsen, a leading U.S. expert on the terror organization's Yemeni affiliate, told NBC on Monday. "His statements and those of his top ministers of deceiving and lying to the Yemeni public and parliament … fit seamlessly into a narrative that AQAP has been peddling in Yemen for years. This is something AQAP will take immediate and lasting advantage of."
Isikof also points out that Amnesty International issued a report on the bombing earlier this year, with evidence of US involvement that has now been proved beyond doubt, thanks to the leak of the cables.
4.05pm: From one pole of US politics (Santorum) to another: Noam Chomsky, speaking to Democracy Now!, says that while the cables reveal Arab leaders urging the United States to attack Iran, opinion polls in the region tell a different story:
What this reveals is the profound hatred for democracy on the part of our political leadership.The Democracy Now! site reminds us that back in 1971, Chomsky helped whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg release the Pentagon Papers – and Ellsberg popped up on television last night to defend WikiLeaks, as mentioned below at 10.15am.
3.58pm: Former senator Rick Santorum – best known for his ferocious opposition to homosexuality – is one of the dozens of Republicans who fancy being president – and he used a trip to New Hampshire, the birthplace of presidential ambition, to denounce WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange:
"We haven't gone after this guy, we haven't tried to prosecute him, we haven't gotten our allies to go out and lock this guy up and bring him up on terrorism charges. What he's doing is terrorism, in my opinion."
3.40pm: Thank you Matthew and good morning from a damp Washington, where the US's bloggers and other media are still transitioning from their knee-jerk "this is old news" response to deciding that there is in fact some hot stuff amongst the cables.
The Washington Post's neo-conservative leader writers today dismiss the cables as "embarrassing to their authors or subjects, but otherwise harmless", and save their attention for how the leak happened in the first place:
Of course there must not be firewalls that prevent senior intelligence analysts and their bosses from seeing and sharing sensitive information. That does not mean a troubled 22-year-old in Baghdad should have access to secret State Department cables from all over the world. Surely there is a way to create a system that can do the former while preventing the latter.
3.25pm: Blimey: Chinese officials have confirmed to Simon Tisdall that China does want to see an "independent and peaceful reunification of the Korean peninsula".
That's it from me. The charming Richard Adams is about to breeze in from Washington.3.21pm: The American Shanghai-based writer Adam Minter seizes on a tantalising looking cable suggestion corruption in China. It claims that a payment of $10,000 was offered to secure the support of premier Wen Jiabao for a mining contract for a North Korean copper mine.
But Minter says the cable reveals more about US diplomatic ignorance than corrupt practices in China.
Now, you don't need to know anything about graft in China, much less world leaders, or Wen Jiabao, to know that $10,000 not only wouldn't get the job done, it'd be viewed as an insult and an automatic disqualification from this any other mining contract. So I'm going to go out on a limb here: there's simply no way that happened. None. Zero. Zilch. Now, is it possible that Wen has a "relationship" with Wanxiang? Sure. But not the one described in the cable..
And this gets to something that I think is going to become increasingly, uncomfortably obvious as more and more of these cables are released: US State Department employees in overseas posts often don't know very much about the countries in which they're posted
3.03pm: This is handy - a country guide to the main WikiLeaks revelations, from Reuters.
It is likely to get fuller over the next few days.2.16pm: The US embassy cables story gets the bizarre news animation treatment from Taiwan's NMA. Taste alert: it includes Uncle Sam taking biometrical details from a UN official in a toilet bowl. And Messrs Sarkozy, Putin, and Gaddafi are not spared.
2.08pm: Two US foreign affairs commentators Eli Lake, from the Washington Times and Daniel Drezner, from Foreign Policy, launch into a lively discussion about the disclosures on Bloggingheads TV.
Lake says the cables reveal that Arab leaders are much more bullish about Iran than Israel.They go on to discuss whether suspected leaker Bradley Manning is a traitor or whistle blower. Drezner says that journalists are better at handling this kind of information than Julian Assange.
1.51pm: There's been more response to Gordon Brown's failed bargaining with the Americans over Gary McKinnon.
Shami Chakrabarti, of Liberty, said: While it is to Brown's credit that he pleaded with the US on behalf of Gary McKinnon, [Tony] Blair's shame is that the rights of people in Britain were signed away and left to special secret pleadings instead of law.
No one should be sent anywhere without evidence in a local court and where justice and mercy suggest dealing with them at home.
Former home secretary David Blunkett told the home affairs select committee that he knew about Brown's appeal to the US at the time.
I remember discussing it with (current Justice Secretary) Ken Clarke in a private meeting that it would be a really good idea for this case not to end up being a political football.
Although the [extradition] treaty itself is not responsible for the immediate removal of Gary... there was an issue for senior politicians to make representations.
1.27pm: The German magazine Der Spiegel provided a teaser of what some of the documents will say about Kenya. "Viewed through the eyes of the US diplomats, entire states -Kenya for example - appear as mires of corruption," it said.
Alfred Mutua, Kenyan government spokesman, delivered an angry response. "If what is reported is true, it is totally malicious, and a total misrepresentation of our country," he told a press conference, recorded by Capital FM Kenya.
"True friends should tell you the truth all the time and should not tell you that everything is OK on one hand, and on the other say the opposite."
The spokesman also revealed that the US government had apologised. 1.09pm: Business secretary Vince Cable has chirped on the Prince Andrew front.
He said anti-corruption policy is "not a matter" for the Duke of York and he should stop talking about it. Speaking to Sky News Cable said it would be "helpful" if he the prince steered clear of policy issues."But his contribution is a very positive one and I want to encourage him to continue to make it," he diplomatically added.
12.56pm: WikiLeaks says its website is being subjected to another distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack. A similar claim on Sunday set a number of hares running, but it turned out to be the work of one hacker called Jester or the3j35t3r, according to the Tech site Mashable.
12.32pm: Saeed Kamali Dehghan has more on the Iranian reaction to the cables.
In Iran the release of the cables has been overshadowed by the assassination of two nuclear scientists. But today opposition websites started covering the leaks more widely. The disclosure in a 2009 diplomatic cable that the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has terminal cancer has attracted attention.
Nikahang Kowsar, a prominent Iranian cartoonist, based in Canada, suggested that Hashemi Rafsanjani, an influential Iranian cleric thought to be sympathetic to the opposition, could be his successor. Rafsanjani is dipicted sitting on a egg timer next to an ailing Khamenei.Another cartoon by Kowsar picks up the view of the Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah that Ahmadinejad is the head of a snake that needs cutting off.
The foreign-based Iranian opposition websites have also focused on the revelations that Iranian parliament speaker, Ali Larijani, was aware of rape and sexual assaults in Kahrizak detention centre in the aftermath of Iran's disputed election in 2009.
It was a theme taken up today by Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast. IRNA, Iran's state news agency, quoted him saying "As the president stated yesterday, this action is very dubious and it should not be taken seriously." He added: "They [Wikileaks cables] were revealed in order to create quarrels between countries, they want to create an Iranophobia between nations."
12.20pm: Our Paris correspondent Angelique Chrisafis reports on the reaction in France, where Le Monde has been poring over the cables.
Le Monde is preparing to release documents relating to France in the coming days. The paper said these will give US view of Paris's anti-terrorism policy, Washington's interpretation of the suburb riots of 2005 and France-US relations.
Today the paper's website has explored French negotiations over taking former Guantánamo Bay bay detainees. It says Sarkozy's government was keen to make a gesture to help the Obama administration in order to improve Paris-Washington relations.But the French media, left and right, today slammed the publication by the Guardian and others of the US embassy cables. The right-wing Le Figaro, close to the French government, ran an editorial entitled "The tyranny of transparency" saying: "The massive diffusion of secret documents belonging to American diplomacy is an act of malice, about which it would be very naïve to rejoice."
The left-wing Libération warned that "in a world of violent conflict", states had a "right" to their secrets, adding that the private positions so-far revealed were little different from what the governments were saying in public.
The Socialist party was as critical of the leaks as Sarkozy's right-wing UMP party. The socialist Jean-Christophe Cambadélis complained of "the tyranny of transparency with no limits" . Socialist spokesman Benoît Hamon said he was "not really in favour" of the publication of the cables.
Josselin de Rohan, the UMP head of the foreign affairs commission in the French senate, said the publication was "very serious" and raised questions of blackmail and voluntary disinformation: "I think we've gone over the boundary here of what's possible in the domain of information."
Francois Baroin, budget minister and government spokesman, told Europe1 radio, "I always thought a transparent society would be a totalitarian society." He said Sarkozy thought the leaks were "irresponsible to the last degree".
12.11pm: Janis Sharp, Gary McKinnon's mother, said she was "very surprised and very pleased" to hear that Gordon Brown had tried to bargain with the Americans in an attempt to avoid his extradition.
"I wish I had known about that, because he [Brown] would have been given credit for it," she told the home affairs select committee. She also criticised the Americans for refusing to budge. "They know this is a difficult decision for this government and yet they did not want to give leeway," she said. "The fact that people at the top are so intransigent, I find difficult to understand... I believe America wants Gary as an example of computer crime."
12.01pm: Time for a summary:
• The latest released cables show that US spurned British attempts to allow the computer hacker Gary McKinnon to serve sentence in UK. McKinnon's mother is appearing before the home affairs select committee.
• Malcolm Rifkind, former foreign secretary and chairman of the intelligence and security committee, said the leaks could scupper China's apparent support for a reunified Korea. Speaking on the Today programme he also described Prince Andrew's rude comments about journalists, the French and fraud investigators as "very unwise remarks to make".
• In an interview with Forbes magazine Wikileaks founder Julian Assange revealed that his next target for documents disclosures will be a large US bank. "A major American bank will suddenly find itself turned inside out," it said.
• In its first comments on the leaks, China called on the US to "properly handle" the emergence of the cables. Foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei told a regular press briefing: "We do not want to see any disturbance in China-US relations." (8.44am)
• Malcolm Rifkind, former foreign secretary and chairman of the intelligence and security committee, said the leaks could scupper China's apparent support for a reunified Korea. Speaking on the Today programme he also described Prince Andrew's rude comments about journalists, the French and fraud investigators as "very unwise remarks to make".
• In an interview with Forbes magazine Wikileaks founder Julian Assange revealed that his next target for documents disclosures will be a large US bank. "A major American bank will suddenly find itself turned inside out," it said.
• In its first comments on the leaks, China called on the US to "properly handle" the emergence of the cables. Foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei told a regular press briefing: "We do not want to see any disturbance in China-US relations." (8.44am)
11.34am: Downing Street just told lobby journalists that the government's position on the extradition of Gary McKinnon has not changed. We don't quite know what its position is - the Cameron government has failed to announce whether or not it will comply with continued US demands to hand over McKinnon after he hacked into their government computers.
11.19am: NATO has joined the international condemnation of WikiLeaks after leaked cables revealed the European countries hosting US nuclear weapons.
NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu described the disclosures as "illegal and dangerous."One of cables revealed that US nuclear weapons still left in Europe are based in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Turkey. The four nations have been long suspected of hosting the warheads, but NATO and the governments involved have always refused to confirm this.
If you haven't seen it this seems a good moment to look at Steve Bell's cartoon today. There's more on Bell brilliance on his noisy website.
Copyright © Steve Bell 2010 10.34am: Gordon Brown a made personal request to allow the hacker Gary McKinnon to serve a sentence in the UK, but the request was rejected by the US, the latest disclosure shows.
Here's the relevant document.
Louis Susman, the current US ambassador to London wrote: "PM Brown, in a one-on-one meeting with the ambassador, proposed a deal: that McKinnon plead guilty, make a statement of contrition, but serve any sentence of incarceration in the UK. Brown cited deep public concern that McKinnon, with his medical condition, would commit suicide or suffer injury if imprisoned in a US facility."
The ambassador says he sought to raise Brown's request in Washington with Obama's newly appointed attorney general, Eric Holder. But the plea got nowhere.
10.15am: Pentagon papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg has defended the release of the cables.
Asked on CNN's Larry King show about Hillary Clinton's condemnation of the WikiLeaks, Ellsberg said "There hasn't been a secretary of state who wouldn't have said exactly the same thing about the Pentagon papers. "I'm sure in America they see Julian Assange as the most dangerous man. A truth teller is potentially very embarrassing."
Saving diplomats embarrassment was not enough of an excuse to withhold the information, he said.
9.55am: There's no mention of Ecuador in the haggling over Guantánamo Bay prisoners. But according to Al Jazeera, Ecuador has offered residence to someone to another US problem - Julian Assange.
"We are ready to give him residence in Ecuador, with no problems and no conditions," Kintto Lucas, the deputy foreign minister, said.
"We are going to invite him to come to Ecuador so he can freely present the information he possesses and all the documentation, not just over the internet but in a variety of public forums."There's more in Spanish on the Ecuador news site Ecuadorinmediato.com
9.31am: The New York Times trawl for latest leaks reveals the extraordinary horse trading between the US and its allies over the fate of Guantánamo Bay prisoners.
Slovenia was promised more "high-level attention" if it helped with detainees; the Maldives said it would accept prisoners in return US help in getting IMF loans; and the Pacific nation Kiribati was offered $3m to take 17 Chinese detainees. There's lots more including details a suggestion by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to implant electronic chips in the detainees.
9.13am: The chairman of North Korea's Supreme People's Assembly, Choe Thae Bok, arrived in Beijing today for a five-day visit, according to AP. He was summoned by China to discuss the current tension in the peninsula after the North unleashed a fiery artillery barrage on a South Korean island.
They have lots to talk about, but don't expect any leaked cables from that visit.
8.44am: Over to Tania Branigan in Beijing where Chinese officials have been making their first comments on the leaked cables.
Beijing called on the US to "properly handle" the emergence of the diplomatic cables, but sought to play down the issue in its first response to the release.
Foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei told a regular press briefing: "We do not want to see any disturbance in China-US relations."
But he declined to comment on any of the issues raised in the documents. Asked whether Beijing believed that North Korea had behaved "like a spoilt child" – as a senior official remarked, according to one of the cables - Hong replied: "China takes note of the leaked reports. We hope the US side will properly handle the relevant issues. As for the content of the documents, we do not comment on that."
8.43am: Former foreign secretary Malcolm Rifkind said China will be "very very angry" with the disclosures on China's possible new stance on North Korea. "And rightly so," he told Today programme.
"The tragedy of these WikiLeaks is that if China is contemplating a historic change in its attitude to North Korea and possibly support for reunification, this premature revelation ... will have put that back by years. That shows the damage that can be done by unauthorised leaks from private conversations." He said the documents on Korea, and the cables yesterday about Saudi Arabia's desire to attack Iran, should only have been available to handful of senior officials. "Clearly they [the Americans] lost control of the system," he said.
On Prince Andrew's comments Rifkind said they were "very unwise remarks to make". But he said he should carry on as trade envoy. "He is an extremely good trade representative. He has always been known to be a blunt speaker," he said.
8.07am: Most of the last night's BBC Newsnight programme was devoted to WikiLeaks.
It included some interesting comments on the Duke of York from Labour MP John Mann. He suggested that the Prince might have to resign as trade ambassador.If these comments by Prince Andrew are accurate - and of course we don't know that yet - then clearly it's of public interest that they are out there, so that he can judge whether he is performing the role well and government can make that judgment as well.
Prince Andrew will need to think through if he is actually carrying out this role to the best of his abilities.
7.34am: The rest of the British media wasn't that interested in WikiLeaks disclosures yesterday. But that's all changed today now that royalty is involved.
The Daily Mirror's front page describes Prince Andrew as the Duke of Yuk (left), the Sun calls him the Tirade Envoy.
The Daily Mail goes with Exposed: Andrew's 4-letter Tirade; and the Telegraph leads with "Duke raged at 'idiocy' of fraud inquiry" (though its web version of the story has slightly different headline).
Inside the Telegraph devotes four news pages to following-up the WikiLeaks and Guardian disclosures, but its comment pages are sniffy about the exercise. "The mass release of American diplomatic cables by the WikiLeaks website has, so far, generated a great deal of heat but not a lot of light," its editorial says.It also carries a scathing opinion piece from the former foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, now chairman of the intelligence and security committee.
It is too early to say precisely what damage the WikiLeaks revelations will do. Many of us suspected that Arab leaders were even more alarmed than the West at the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran. It does not surprise me that they would be supportive of a military attack if all other pressures fail. The fact that this is now public may bring home to the international community and, in particular, Russia and China, that the UN Security Council must agree very heavy sanctions and pressure on Iran if the whole Middle East is not going to be disrupted by conflict.
But regardless of whether the spotlight of unauthorised publicity might, occasionally, help rather than hinder, the deliberate leaking of sensitive dispatches and diplomatic cables is highly damaging in what is already a very dangerous world.
7.15am: Here's a catch-up on the current batch of leaked US diplomatic cables:
Latest revelations
• China is ready to accept a reunified Korea and regards North Korea as a spoiled child. South Korea's vice-foreign minister said he was told by two named senior Chinese officials that they believed Korea should be reunified under Seoul's control, and that this view was gaining ground with the leadership in Beijing.
• Washington devours hearsay about Kim Jong-il's health, state of mind and succession plans. The "Dear Leader" variously emerges as "a flabby old chap", "quite a good drinker" and "increasingly indecisive since his stroke and other health problems".
• The world according to Prince Andrew: corrupt French, nosy journalists, idiotic bribery investigations. Secret cables from a US ambassador exposes the Duke of York's "astonishingly candid" approach as a UK trade envoy.
• Hillary Clinton asked if Argentina's president Cristina Kirchner was on medication to help her calm down. The US regards Kirchner as volatile, and suffering from "nerves and anxiety", the cables show.
• You can read all the latest cables here.
• Washington devours hearsay about Kim Jong-il's health, state of mind and succession plans. The "Dear Leader" variously emerges as "a flabby old chap", "quite a good drinker" and "increasingly indecisive since his stroke and other health problems".
• The world according to Prince Andrew: corrupt French, nosy journalists, idiotic bribery investigations. Secret cables from a US ambassador exposes the Duke of York's "astonishingly candid" approach as a UK trade envoy.
• Hillary Clinton asked if Argentina's president Cristina Kirchner was on medication to help her calm down. The US regards Kirchner as volatile, and suffering from "nerves and anxiety", the cables show.
• You can read all the latest cables here.
Latest comment and analysis
• Simon Tisdall explains what the cables reveal about China's policy North Korea.
• Guardian editorial urges Pyongyang to read the cables to instil realism in a dictatorship so clearly lacking it.
• Guardian editorial urges Pyongyang to read the cables to instil realism in a dictatorship so clearly lacking it.
Latest reactions
• Hillary Clinton condemned the leaks as an attack on the fabric of responsible government.
• Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the disclosures are part of an American campaign of psychological warfare against Iran.
• Freedom of information campaigner Heather Brooke claimed the leaks show how the internet is changing the way people relate to power.
• Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the disclosures are part of an American campaign of psychological warfare against Iran.
• Freedom of information campaigner Heather Brooke claimed the leaks show how the internet is changing the way people relate to power.
You can read all about yesterday's fun and games on Monday's liveblog. It includes verdicts on the first batch of revelations from a very eclectic cast of characters including: Sarah Palin; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hillary Clinton, and a Today programme ding-dong between Sir Christopher Meyer and Alan Rusbridger.
