India, world brace for new WikiLeaks flood

American diplomats have warned India to prepare itself for potential embarrassment from the expected release by WikiLeaks of three million confidential U.S. diplomatic cables. The message was conveyed to the Indian embassy in Washington after a senior State Department official tried unsuccessfully to reach Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao, who is travelling in Sri Lanka.

India is not the only country the U.S. has alerted. The documents which will go live on the Internet beginning in the next 24 to 48 hours consist of cables sent by American embassies around the world — but especially in India, Israel, Russia, Turkey, Canada and Britain — to the State Department in Washington. Since such cables are meant to be confidential, it is standard practice for the diplomats writing them to be candid and blunt in their assessments and sometimes even disrespectful to officials and leaders in their host countries. It is this aspect of the forthcoming leak which is particularly worrying U.S. diplomats. Some cables could also contain information about surreptitious activity by U.S. missions.

It is not clear what time period the cables cover but previous WikiLeaks disclosures have tended to range over the past five or six years. This is a period when the U.S. and India were locked in detailed and sometimes testy negotiations over nuclear commerce and defence cooperation.

The documents, said to be over seven times more than the recently leaked U.S. secret war logs from Iraq, have been reportedly taken from the Secret Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet) used to transmit classified information to the U.S. Defence and State Departments. WikiLeaks had earlier received a video from SIPRNet that showed three deliberate attacks by a U.S. Army helicopter in Iraq that killed two newspersons and children beside several civilians.

According to The Independent, the U.S. ambassador in London had informed the British government about some of the contents of the documents that are likely to be released. Similar meetings were also reported from Turkey, Israel, Canada, Denmark, Norway and Australia.

World leaders were warned last night by America that damaging secrets about their nations were about to be laid bare.

The documents include highly damaging and embarrassing communiques from U.S. embassies around the world, especially from London - revealing the truth behind the so-called 'special relationship' between the U.K. and the U.S.

The U.S. ambassador to London made an unprecedented personal visit to Downing Street to warn that whistleblower website WikiLeaks was about to publish secret assessments of what Washington really thinks of Britain.

The website is on the verge of revealing almost three million documents, including thousands of sensitive diplomatic cables sent to Washington from the American embassy in London.

The bombshell leak is thought to include U.S. assessments of former British prime minister Gordon Brown’s personality and his prospects of winning the General Election, and secret discussions on the return of the Lockerbie bomber to Libya.

Assessments of current Prime Minister David Cameron’s election chances and his private assurances to U.S. officials may also be included, Government sources believe.

They fear they will emerge on Sunday in co-ordinated releases in newspapers in Britain, Germany and America.

The British government is so worried that last night it issued a D-Notice, warning that publishing the secrets could compromise national security.

The website has previously released secret details of allied military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Revelations of American brutality in Iraq and Afghanistan created shockwaves, made WikiLeaks notorious and led to its founder Julian Assange - an Australian-born computer hacker - being vilified by governments around the world. He is now wanted for alleged rape in Sweden.

In total, around 2.7million confidential messages between the U.S. government and its embassies around the world are to be released.