Arabs urged attack on Iran by USSFlb

November 29, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

WikiLeaks Documents

McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON

The first batch of newly leaked U.S. diplomatic cables Sunday documented that King Abdullah, the leader of Saudi Arabia, echoed by other Arab leaders, have urged the United States to “cut off the head of the snake” and destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities.

They also revealed a U.S. State Department instruction to U.S. diplomats to spy on United Nations officials and collect their personal data, and they contained unflattering portraits of a number of world leaders.

Additional releases in coming days will outline U.S. fears over the security of Pakistan’s nuclear program, U.S. and South Korean discussions of Korean reunification and alleged Chinese cyber-sabotage, according to the five media organizations given advance access to the materials.

The first tranche of documents, released by WikiLeaks, the whistle-blowing website, didn’t contain any explosive revelations, although a cable outlining U.S. efforts to persuade China to stop commercial air shipments of North Korean missile parts to Iran via Beijing appeared to divulge a top-secret U.S. intelligence operation.

However, the cables’ blunt language and their unvarnished statements of U.S. positions on a wide range of issues as well as internal U.S. assessments of world leaders could prove highly embarrassing, hurt ties with allies and other countries and diminish trust in Washington’s ability to safeguard secrets.

“These cables could compromise private discussions with foreign governments and opposition leaders,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said in a prepared statement. “When the substance of private conversations is printed on the front pages of newspapers across the world, it can deeply impact not only U.S. foreign policy interests, but those of our allies and friends.”

“We condemn in the strongest terms the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information,” he said.

One awkward leak was a January 2010 cable describing a meeting between Army Gen. David Petraeus, then head of U.S. Central Command, and President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen in which Saleh said he would cover up U.S. air strikes against local al-Qaida members by continuing to say “the bombs are ours, not yours.”

At that, Saleh’s deputy prime minister joked that “he had just ’lied’ by telling Parliament” that Yemeni forces had launched the strikes.

As it did with earlier leaks of thousands of U.S. reports on military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, WikiLeaks provided more than 250,000 diplomatic cables in advance to the New York Times, Germany’s Der Spiegel newsmagazine and the Guardian of Great Britain. It expanded the group to include Spanish newspaper El Pais and French newspaper Le Monde.

WikiLeaks is reported to have received the documents from a U.S. Army intelligence analyst who was based in Iraq and had access to a Pentagon-run computer system that also carries State Department cable traffic classified up to secret. The system does not carry material rated top secret, the most highly classified level.

The analyst, Pfc. Bradley Manning, 22, was arrested this year and charged with the unauthorized use and disclosure of U.S. classified information.

The cables released Sunday drive home the preoccupation by President Barack Obama and his predecessor, George W. Bush, with Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program, terrorism and nuclear proliferation, and the depth of international concern.

An April 20, 2008, cable recalled repeated entreaties by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia for a U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, which are widely believed to be part of a secret nuclear weapons-development program, an allegation denied by Tehran.