Photo by: Sovan Philong
Prime Minister shakes hands with US Ambassador Carol Rodley before leaving for the ASEAN-United States Leaders’ meeting in New York in September.
Nearly 800 documents from the United States Embassy in Phnom Penh are part of a massive leak of American diplomatic cables by the website WikiLeaks, the first installment of which was released on Monday.
WikiLeaks has pledged to release the documents in its possession gradually over the coming months and no documents related to Cambodia were part of the first batch released. According to an index of the cables, however, there are 1,010 Cambodia-related documents in the WikiLeaks archive, including 147 classified as “confidential” and five termed “secret”.
The US has condemned the leak, which comprises more than 250,000 documents from 274 diplomatic outposts and the US State Department, branding it a threat to security and America’s relations with its allies.
“Wikileaks disclosure of classified information is an irresponsible attempt to wreak havoc and destabilise global security. It potentially jeopardises lives and global engagement among and between nations,” Mark Wenig, spokesman for the US Embassy in Phnom Penh, said in an email.
“Given its potential impact, we condemn unauthorised disclosures and are taking every step to prevent security breaches.”
Wenig declined to comment on the substance of the Cambodia-related documents.
“As a matter of policy, the department of state does not comment on allegedly leaked documents,” he said.
“I can certainly state, however, that our relationship with Cambodia is based on mutual respect and shared goals, and that we are proud of how far our relationship has come.”
According to a classification system laid out in an executive order signed by US President Barack Obama last year, disclosure of documents labelled “secret” could cause “serious damage” to US security, while documents labelled “confidential” could cause “damage”, in the assessment of US officials. Thousands of cables in the WikiLeaks stash are also labelled with the tag “noforn”, which means they are not to be shared with foreign nationals, though it is not yet clear how many Cambodia-related documents are labelled this way.
In addition to the cables from the embassy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia-related documents in WikiLeaks’ possession have also originated from other embassies including those in Beijing, Hanoi and Bangkok, as well as from the US missions in Geneva and at the United Nations in New York. WikiLeaks had released only 226 of its 251,287 so-called “Cable Gate” documents as of yesterday, pledging on its website to release the rest “in stages over the next few months”....read the full story in tomorrow’s Phnom Penh Post or see the updated story online from 3PM UTC/GMT +7 hours.
No comments:
Post a Comment