WikiLeaks US embassy cables: live updates
• Mervyn King's damning views on Cameron and Osborne
• Lib Dems drop attack against Cameron after Ivan's death
• US and UK fears over Pakistan's nuclear weapons
• Pakistan army sponsoring militants as cash goes missing
• Full coverage of the WikiLeaks cables
• Lib Dems drop attack against Cameron after Ivan's death
• US and UK fears over Pakistan's nuclear weapons
• Pakistan army sponsoring militants as cash goes missing
• Full coverage of the WikiLeaks cables
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10.03pm: On the other side of the Russia-Georgia conflict of 2008, the New York Times delves into the cables and finds that US officials were blinded to the approaching conflict by their reliance on the Georgian government's accounts:
By 2008, as the region slipped toward war, sources outside the Georgian government were played down or not included in important cables. Official Georgian versions of events were passed to Washington largely unchallenged.
The last cables before the eruption of the brief Russian-Georgian war showed an embassy relaying statements that would with time be proved wrong.
Television shots of Russian tanks moving into South Ossetia in 2008. Photograph: AP 9.45pm: The latest batch of cables involving Russia in its 2008 conflict with Georgia are eye-opening. The Guardian's Luke Harding reports that the US ambassador in Tbilisi, John Tefft, said the Russians "consider few if any holds barred":
In his dispatches to Washington the ambassador reported that Russia's FSB spy agency directly controlled South Ossetia, with Russian FSB agents sitting in the government of rebel president Eduard Kokoity. "In South Ossetia, many de facto cabinet ministers and advisers to Kokoity are Russian officials – in most cases believed to be FSB," Tefft wrote, noting that the FSB agents were rotated in and out of Russia.
Russia even paid the salaries of police and other civil servants in South Ossetia – and increased their wages to stop them from defecting to a Georgian-backed rival administration. It also handed out Russian passports to 95% per cent of the enclave's residents, Tefft said, – creating instant citizens whom Russia would "defend" the following year.
9.34pm: The Guardian has just posted a tranche of article from the US embassy cables involving Russia, and there's some astonishing stuff here. The Guardian's Luke Harding reports:
Russia is a corrupt, autocratic kleptocracy centred on the leadership of Vladimir Putin, in which officials, oligarchs and organised crime are bound together to create a "virtual mafia state", according to leaked secret diplomatic cables that provide a damning American assessment of its erstwhile rival superpower.Other highlights include:
• Alexander Litvinenko murder 'probably had Putin's OK'
• Russian government 'using mafia for its dirty work'
• US cables claim Russia armed Georgian separatists
• Russian government 'using mafia for its dirty work'
• US cables claim Russia armed Georgian separatists
8.57pm: WikiLeaks, via its Twitter account, takes another shot at Amazon after the online retailer withdrew its hosting of the WikiLeaks websites (which Ewen MacAskill reports here):
If Amazon are so uncomfortable with the first amendment, they should get out of the business of selling books.
8.28pm: US-Canadian relations have always been an interesting source of tension, and the New York Times has highlights from US embassy cables that underline some of the sore points:
A trove of diplomatic cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to a number of publications, disclose a perception by American diplomats that Canadians "always carry a chip on their shoulder" in part because of a feeling that their country "is condemned to always play 'Robin' to the US 'Batman.' "
