Clinton condemns WikiLeaks ‘attack’ as harmful for US foreign relations

WASHINGTON - The United States has intensified its efforts at damage control, with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton calling the massive release not just a problem for American foreign policy but “an attack on the international community.”

In a statement to journalists issued in the State Department’s Treaty Room before she was to leave on a four-country trip through Central Asia and the Persian Gulf, Clinton said that both the furthering of US national interests and the operation of the world’s international political system depend on thousands of confidential exchanges, assessments, and conversations every day.

Far from being a “laudable” effort to make the workings of government transparent, the leaking of classified cables, she said, can have a chilling effect on US foreign policy goals such as the promotion of human rights or the expansion of religious freedoms, the Christian Science Monitor reports.

The release of more than 250,000 cables primarily from the Bush and Obama administrations by WikiLeaks - the same organization that released classified information on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars earlier this year - is a cause of deep embarrassment to the US.

But it is not likely to lead to any significant geopolitical shifts or fundamental reworkings of US relations with other countries, many foreign-policy analysts say.

“No country is going to suddenly act against its own self interest because of this,” says Lawrence Korb, a foreign-policy expert and former Pentagon official at the Center for American Progress in Washington.

He added: “The real issue here is whether our own diplomats now are going to be as forthcoming as they used to be,” he says, “and will the people they talk to be as open with them?” (ANI)