WASHINGTON: The massive leak of diplomatic cables has put a chill on US diplomatic contacts at a time when President Barack Obama’s administration is trying to rebuild world trust in its foreign policy, experts said.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Senator John Kerry and former State Department officials all stressed the need for US diplomats to have candid conversations with foreign interlocutors without fear of public exposure.
"Every country, including the United States, must be able to have honest, private dialogue with other countries about issues of common concern," Clinton told reporters.
But the chief US diplomat also said she was confident "the partnerships the Obama administration has worked so hard to build will withstand this challenge" posed by the dump of documents by the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks.
James Collins, a former US ambassador to Moscow, was not so sure.
"It’s certainly going to complicate the ability to build trust," Collins told AFP.
"It’s hard to say yet whether it’s going to undermine it or not. But it’s certainly going to undermine the ability of people to have confidence that what they talk about in confidence will stay that way," he said.
Collins, who heads the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Russia and Eurasia program, said the leaks will put a chill on talks with foreign powers and deny Washington a source of information on which to build policy.
"It will also deprive them (foreign policy makers) of the ability to get candid advice from our people in the field," he added.
He said it will complicate the US ability to conduct multi-party negotiations on sensitive topics, such as efforts to curb the nuclear ambitions on Iran and North Korea or to stabilize Afghanistan.
"If you’re conducting negotiations, are these going to be confidential or not?" Collins said. "Our partners are just not going to know."
On Iran, the United States works with Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany. On North Korea, it works with Russia, China, Japan and South Korea.
He said he could not tell whether the leaks would undercut the Obama administration’s policy to "reset" relations with Russia which hit a low during the administration of former president George W. Bush.
Nor could he tell whether it will undermine understandings with partners on Iran.
Wendy Chamberlin, a former US ambassador to Pakistan, told AFP that a "great deal of damage" had been done to the conduct of diplomacy, adding that foreign interlocutors "will be constrained to talk to us if they know it will go immediately into the press and to their publics."
Richard Haas, a former director of policy planning at the State Department, said the massive leak "does not appear to constitute a national security crisis," but causes both immediate and long-term problems for the United States and its partners.
"The longer term damage may be more real," wrote Haas, the Council on Foreign Relations president.
"Foreign governments may think twice before sharing their secrets or even their candid judgments with American counterparts lest they read about them on the Internet," he said.
Haas said the WikiLeaks revelations may also create some immediate security problems.
"Counterterrorism efforts in Yemen might also be set back as the leadership there might well feel the need to distance itself from the United States," he said.
In January talks with US General David Petraeus, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh admitted lying to his own people by pretending that US military strikes against Al-Qaeda are carried out by Yemeni forces, according to a leaked document.
"If you look at something like Yemen, it may make them unwilling to cooperate with respect to terrorism," US Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters.
"It’s an outrageous, counter-productive effort and I think that prosecution is what ought to happen," he said.
Meanwhile, friends and foes of the United States turned on WikiLeaks over its release of secret US diplomatic cables, with some saying the revelations undermined diplomacy, while others dismissed them as worthless.
"This will weaken diplomacy around the world. It will weaken diplomacy in general, but first and foremost American diplomacy," Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said as the mass release of documents continued.
"I see this rather as something that is making the world less safe," he said.
But Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, mentioned in much of the diplomatic discussion revealed by the WikiLeaks website, dismissed the documents as "worthless mischief".
Afghanistan said its ties with Washington would not be shaken by portrayals of President Hamid Karzai as an "extremely weak" and paranoid leader and his brother as a corrupt drugs baron.
"We don’t see anything substantive in the document that will strain the relationship," Karzai’s spokesman Waheed Omer told reporters.
In Washington, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs described those behind the leaks as "criminals, first and foremost" who had committed a "serious" offence.
It was an understatement to say President Barack Obama was "not pleased", he added.
"Obviously, there is an ongoing criminal investigation about the stealing of and the dissemination of sensitive and classified information," he said.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told US allies she "deeply regretted" th release of the cables.
"This disclosure is not just an attack on America’s foreign policy interests. It is an attack on the international community," Clinton said following talks with Turkey’s foreign minister.
Ahmet Davutoglu — whose visit coincided with the release of the cables, one of which had Washington wondering if it could count on Turkey to contain Iran — stressed the "strategic relationship" between their countries.
Close US allies Britain, France and Germany brushed aside disparaging personal remarks about their leaders contained in the cables.
France however condemned the leaks as "irresponsible" and "an attack on states’ sovereignty."
Britain slammed the release as damaging to national security, but said it would continue to work closely with Washington.
And German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told reporters: "A few gossipy comments about European politicians are not exactly welcome but they are not really important.
"But in other cases, people’s lives could be put at risk."
Israel, which has long waged a diplomatic war on Tehran, said the cables vindicated its concerns about a nuclear Iran that were shared across the Arab world.
The documents showed that Saudi Arabia had repeatedly urged a US military strike to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
"The Arab countries are pushing the United States towards military action more forcefully than Israel," said an Israeli official.
But Ahmadinejad told a press conference broadcast live on state television V that "the documents that they released are a mischief. We do not see any value in them."
In Saudi Arabia, foreign ministry spokesman Osama Nugali told AFP that "these documents do not concern the kingdom… Nor is it aware of their authenticity. Therefore Saudi Arabia cannot comment on them."
Russia also played down being called "a virtual mafia state" where all the decision-making is done by "alpha dog" Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and not President Dmitry Medvedev, described as "Robin to Putin’s Batman."
"Our own diplomats are sometimes just as open in their own private messages to each other," a Kremlin official told the Kommersant business daily.
But some observers directed their criticism at the US administration.
Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate, accused Obama of not having done enough to prevent the leaks, in a message on her Facebook page.
Of WikiLeaks director Julian Assange she said: "He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands."
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez meanwhile called for heads to roll.
"Mrs Clinton should resign," Chavez said in a speech. "It’s the least you can do: resign, along with those other delinquents working in the State Department."
