India not embarrassed by any Wikileaks’ revelations

NEW DELHI - Even as Wikileaks continues to release confidential US diplomatic cables, Indian officials Friday indicated there was nothing in the leaked internal communications made public so far which were any potential source of embarrassment.

We are quite confident in terms of discourse with US… nothing which has been disclosed so far has been any potential source of embarrassment, said a senior government official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Since Nov 28, Wikileaks, the whistleblower website, has begun publishing in stages over 250,000 leaked US embassy cables, dating from 1966 to February 2010. These include cables sent by embassies in Delhi and Islamabad, which highlight some of the key diplomatic discussions following the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks.

It also included an assessment by US’ New Delhi embassy on the Indian military doctrine post 26/11 of ‘Cold Start, or mulling taking military action against Pakistan, which it described as more of a hypothesis rather than some strategy that the Indian government endorsed actively.

Officials noted there was certainly a lot of interest about the Wikileaks cables in the Indian foreign policy circles.

Before the release of the cables, and in the subsequent dates, US officials have been in touch with their counterparts in the Ministry of External Affairs.

Wikileaks is hugely embarrassing for US. They have in their conversations expressed how unhappy and regretful they are that this has happened, said an official.

But it was pointed out that even if there was anything adverse in the leaked mails, it will not still affect the strong relationship between India and US. We are at a stage where there is a maturity in our relations with US, said the sources.

The latest cable published is that of a conversation between Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao and US special representative on Afghanistan-Pakistan Richard Holbrooke in January this year.

But more revealing information has come from the Islamabad embassy, throwing light on critical discussions related to Afghanistan, military operations against extremists and relations with India post 26/11.

However, officials were also aware that only a small part of the leaked documents have been made public so far. “Let’s see how the situation shapes up in the next few days,” the source said.