Wikileaks documenten #6: Reeks kon sneller

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Op vrijdag 3 december 2010 22:07 schreef Nielsch het volgende:

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wel als je het hebt over het achterhouden van informatie voor burgers.

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het valt me tegen van je, had je hoger ingeschat.

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Op vrijdag 3 december 2010 18:45 schreef Im.Kant. het volgende:

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Diplomatieke betrekkingen laten varen voor een of ander ideologisch 'alles-moet-openbaar-zijn' ideaal?

Kent niemand hier dan het begrip Realpolitik?

Velen lijken bevangen te zijn van het dwaze, irrationele en geromantiseerde idee dat de overheid absoluut geen geheimen mag hebben.

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Op vrijdag 3 december 2010 22:21 schreef Pizzakoppo het volgende:

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Geweldig toch? De opvatting dat de overheid er is voor de burger wordt blijkbaar nog breed gedragen.

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Op vrijdag 3 december 2010 22:21 schreef Pizzakoppo het volgende:

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Geweldig toch? De opvatting dat de overheid er is voor de burger wordt blijkbaar nog breed gedragen.

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Op vrijdag 3 december 2010 22:21 schreef msnk het volgende:
Er wordt heel weinig gepraat over de censuur die Twitter toepast op de trending topics. Vreemd wel.

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Op vrijdag 3 december 2010 22:33 schreef Masanga het volgende:
Het land dat Assange asiel biedt zal zich heel populair maken bij landen als de VS enzo..

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Op vrijdag 3 december 2010 22:21 schreef msnk het volgende:
Er wordt heel weinig gepraat over de censuur die Twitter toepast op de trending topics. Vreemd wel.

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Op vrijdag 3 december 2010 22:33 schreef Masanga het volgende:
Het land dat Assange asiel biedt zal zich heel populair maken bij landen als de VS enzo..

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Diplomatic cables: Gaddafi risked nuclear disaster after UN slight

Highly enriched and unstable uranium left on Libyan runway because leader was banned from pitching tent in New York

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi WikiLeaks cables: Muammar Gaddafi was prepared to leave highly enriched uranium vulnerable to hijacking by terrorists or a disastrous meltdown in order to teach the UN a lesson. Photograph: Mohamed Messara/EPA

A potential "environmental disaster" was kept secret by the US last year when a large consignment of highly enriched uranium in Libya came close to cracking open and leaking radioactive material into the atmosphere.

The incident came after the mercurial Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, suddenly went back on a promise to dispose of the weapons-grade uranium, apparently out of pique at a diplomatic slight received in New York when he was barred from pitching a tent outside the UN.

Leaked cables show that the shipment of seven metal casks each weighing five tonnes and only sealed for transport, not storage were left on the tarmac of a Libyan nuclear facility with a single armed guard. As US and Russian diplomats frantically lobbied Libyan officials, scientists warned that the uranium inside the casks was highly radioactive and rapidly heating up. The material was originally part of Gaddafi's nuclear weapons plan.

"Department of energy experts are deeply concerned by the safety and security risks," US ambassador Gene Cretz said in a secret cable back to Washington from Tripoli. "According to the DOE experts we have one month to resolve the situation before the safety and security concerns become a crisis.

"The temperature of the HEU [highly enriched uranium] fuel, which is radioactive, could reach such a level to cause cracking on the casks and release of radioactive nuclear material Security concerns alone dictate that we must employ all of our resources to find a timely solution to this problem and to keep any mention of it out of the press."

The casks containing 5.2kg of HEU were considered "highly transportable" and would have represented a huge prize for terrorists or would-be nuclear states. US officials, the cables show, urged the Libyans to disengage the crane at the site that would have allowed intruders to load the casks on to a vehicle.

The containers were sitting at Libya's Tajoura nuclear facility. The DOE team "only saw one security guard with a gun (although they did not know if it was loaded)".

"Given the highly transportable nature of the HEU and the shoddy security at Tajoura any mention of this issue in the press could pose serious security concerns. We have to assume that the Libyan leader is the source of the problem."

The crisis blew up on 20 November 2009. A phone call suddenly came that day from Libya's atomic energy director, Ali Gashut, just as a Russian heavy transport aircraft, a specialised Antonov 124-100, was due to arrive in Libya to take away the uranium for disposal. Gashut had been "instructed", he said, to prevent the plane from landing.

The US government had offered to pay Russia to take back the HEU and dispose of it. It had originally been supplied by Moscow, supposedly for research.

Libya's agreement to get rid of its HEU was part of a package for Gaddafi to end his pariah status by abandoning weapons of mass destruction. By autumn 2009 he should have sent back all his HEU and started to destroy his stock of Scud B missiles. By the end of 2010 he is supposed to have converted his Rabta chemical weapons factory into a pharmaceutical plant and destroyed nerve gas ingredients. The final step, next year, is for Libya to destroy stocks of mustard gas.

When the HEU crisis broke, Cretz finally managed to confront Gaddafi's influential son, Saif al-Islam. Saif announced that the Libyans were "fed up" and Gaddafi had felt "humiliated" by his recent treatment in New York.

US diplomats recorded privately that Gaddafi's own compatriots felt embarrassed and ashamed by what were termed his "antics" in New York that August.

Gaddafi had been refused consent to pitch a tent outside UN headquarters, and a rambling speech almost two hours long he made to the UN general assembly was greeted with considerable hostility.

Cretz suggested that a personal message from Hillary Clinton to Gaddafi himself might soothe the dictator. A placatory message was accordingly rapidly dispatched on 3 December. But permissions were still not granted. The HEU casks remained on the tarmac, getting hotter.

A US diplomat went to see the Libyan foreign minister in alarm and "described the environmental disaster that could take place We also are seeking a meeting with Saif al-Islam's aide in hopes of ensuring that senior Libyan officials understand the grave security and safety risks".

On 7 December the situation finally brightened: armed guards appeared at the nuclear plant. "A close aide to Saif al-Islam al-Qadhafi indicated that [Clinton's] message had been positively received and passed to the 'highest levels'."

There was more brinkmanship to come. The US said it would refuse to pay the $800,000 Russian transp ort bill unless the fuel was officially released by a deadline of 18 December.

Finally the giant Antonov plane was allowed to land. At dawn on 21 December, after a fraught month, it successfully took off for Russia with its radioactive cargo.

America's nuclear emergency team that oversaw the shipment reported that "the month-long impasse had taken a visible toll on Dr Ali Gashut, the head of the Libyan atomic energy establishment".

This year appears to have brought a new crisis this time over the promised destruction of Libya's 240 Scud B missiles. "General Ahmed Azwai insisted that the US was mostly responsible for Libya's delayed fulfillment of Scud B destruction commitments," another cable from Tripoli reported.

"Azwai blamed the US for hampering Libyan efforts to find alternative weapons system to replace its Scud B stock and refused to discuss a destruction timeline." He "insisted that the 2004 trilateral agreement included 'promises by the US and UK to find a replacement'."

The outcome of that dispute is unclear.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------PANEL "A GLIMPSE INTO LIBYAN LEADER QADHAFI'S ECCENTRICITIES" Under this title, a dispatch classified "Secret" of 29 Sep 2009 [227491] disclosed the dictator's reliance on a "voluptuous blonde" Ukrainian nurse S E C R E T NOFORN SUBJECT: A GLIMPSE INTO LIBYAN LEADER QADHAFI'S ECCENTRICITIES CLASSIFIED BY: Gene A. Cretz, Ambassador, U.S. Embassy Tripoli, Recent first-hand experiences with Libyan Leader Muammar al-Qadhafi and his staff, primarily in preparation for his UN [general assembly] trip, provided rare insights into Qadhafi's inner circle and personal proclivities

Qadhafi relies heavily on his long-time Ukrainian nurse, Galyna Kolotnytska, who has been described as a "voluptuous blonde. ".Libyan protocol staff emphasized to multiple Emboffs that Qadhafi cannot travel without Kolotnytska, as she alone "knows his routine".

" Some embassy contacts have claimed that Qadhafi and the 38 year-old Kolotnytska have a romantic relationship. While he did not comment on such rumors, a Ukrainian political officer recently confirmed that the Ukrainian nurses "travel everywhere with the Leader.

While it is tempting to dismiss his many eccentricities as signs of instability, Qadhafi is a complicated individual who has managed to stay in power for forty years through a skillful balancing of interests and realpolitik method

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Op vrijdag 3 december 2010 22:46 schreef spoor4 het volgende:

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Bron: Guardian.co.uk

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Op vrijdag 3 december 2010 22:46 schreef msnk het volgende:

De president zei dat hij iemand die de wetten breekt, hoe oneerlijk die ook zijn, geen asiel zou geven en dat wat de minister had gezegd zijn persoonlijke mening was (die wilde Assange asiel bieden)

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Op vrijdag 3 december 2010 22:46 schreef msnk het volgende:

Hm, wat was dat?

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WikiLeaks cables claim Russia armed Georgian separatists

Grad missiles given to rebels in South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Russian campaign to undermine Georgia, US dispatches claim

Russian soldiers during clashes with Georgian troops in South Ossetia Russian soldiers during clashes with Georgian troops in South Ossetia. WikiLeaks cables allege Moscow armed rebels in the region. Photograph: Dmitry Kostyukov/AFP/Getty Images

Russia provided Grad missiles and other arms to separatists in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and carried out a wave of "covert actions" to undermine Georgia in the runup to the 2008 Russian-Georgian war, US diplomatic cables say.

The Kremlin's hostile measures against Georgia included missile attacks, murder plots and "a host of smaller-scale actions", the leaked cables said. Russian secret services also ran a disinformation campaign against Georgia's pro-American, pro-Nato president, Mikheil Saakashvili, claiming he suffered from "paranoid dysfunction".

"The cumulative weight of the evidence of the last few years suggests that the Russians are aggressively playing a high-stakes covert game, and they consider few if any holds barred," the US ambassador in Tbilisi, John Tefft, wrote on 20 August 2007 in a classified cable.

One Kremlin aim was to remove Saakashvili, Tefft wrote. But the "variety and extent of the active measures suggests the deeper goal is turning Georgia from its Euroatlantic orientation back into the Russian fold", he said. Its aim was also to "provoke the Georgian leadership into a rash reaction that separates Georgia further from the west".

In the cable Tefft reviewed a long list of suspected Russian actions aimed at destabilising Georgia. These included a missile attack in Kodori an area of Abkhazia then controlled by Georgia the blowing up of a Georgian police car, and a suspected plot to kill an opposition figure.

Tefft said there was incontrovertible evidence that Moscow was giving "direct, if at times thinly veiled, support" to Georgia's two separatist regions against the wishes of the Georgian government. This support was also military: "The South Ossetians have reportedly received arms and equipment from Russia, including Grad missiles, on various occasions, including during recent tensions."

The ambassador's leaked cables are likely to reopen the acrimonious and still inconclusive debate over who was to blame for starting the 2008 war. Russia insists Saakashvili triggered the conflict by sending tanks in to recapture South Ossetia, prompting Russia to launch its own counteroperation to protect the lives of Russian citizens.

Saakashvili, however, insists he was forced to act after intolerable Russian provocation. He has blamed Moscow for deliberately frustrating his attempts to reach a deal with South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and has said the Russians financed, armed, guided and nurtured the two separatist movements.

The cables broadly support Saakashvili's view. 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.

Tefft acknowledged that Abkhazia's de facto government had a "somewhat greater degree of independence from Moscow" than its South Ossetian counterpart. But he said it was evident the Russians still had "great leverage" over Abkhazia's Soviet-mentality president, Sergei Bagapsh, who frequently travelled to Moscow for consultations.

When Bagapsh fell ill in April 2007, he was flown to Moscow for emergency treatment on an FSB plane, Tefft said, citing information from the Georgians. Tefft went on: "Several sources have also told us that a senior FSB officer actually lives in a separate residence on Bagapsh's presidential compound."The cables make clear that in the months leading up to the war the Bush administration urged Saakashvili to shrug off Russia's goading and act with restraint. In a meeting in Paris on 13 June 2007, William Burns, then the US ambassador to Moscow, advised Saakashvili to "avoid antagonising them [the Russians]".

Burns expressed sympathy with the predicament of Saakashvili, who told the Americans he believed Putin was "personally committed to removing Abkhazia from Georgia" a prophecy that turned out to be correct. He said Russia couldn't be trusted, and called for a Nato membership action plan for Georgia as a "'deterrent' against Russian adventurism".

The cables also chronicle Russia's anger and growing frustration with Georgia. In November 2006 Russia's deputy foreign minister, Grigoriy Karasin, complained to Matt Bryza, the US deputy assistant secretary of state, after Tbilisi arrested four Russian officers on espionage charges. "Our patience is at an end," Karasin said.

According to a cable written by Burns, Bryza said the US had warned Saakashvili not to engage in any military action. "He (Byrza) has been clear with Saakashvili: if Georgia uses force or stumbles into a conflict, Saakashvili will find himself alone, blamed by the international community for recklessness." When the war began most western governments, including the UK, blamed the Kremlin seeing Russia's military operation not as a peacekeeping mission but an old-style invasion. To the chagrin of Washington, Moscow swiftly recognised South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent, arguing that the Americans had done the same thing with Kosovo.

The cables reveal that Russia's actions prompted much diplomatic soul-searching. On 28 August 2008 soon after the French president, Nicholas Sarkozy, brokered an EU peace deal the Foreign Office's defence and intelligence officials pondered the war's implications. Mariot Leslie now the UK's ambassador to Nato dubbed it a "strategic tectonic shift in international relations", the US embassy in London recorded.

Asked whether Russia's decision to go into Georgia was part of an overall change of strategy, Leslie replied with exquisite equivocation. She said she was "still assessing if it was a strategic decision or a tactical decision with strategic consequences".

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Op vrijdag 3 december 2010 23:02 schreef Nielsch het volgende:
Dominic Weesie: "Voor ons is het oorlog. Dit is de eerste strijd tussen internet en de gevestigde orde. Internet - waar wij vandaan komen - steunt WikiLeaks. Punt uit."