By Matthew Russell Lee, News Muse
UNITED NATIONS, November 29 -- Wikileaks was the topic at the UN Monday evening, whether at an event about Gaza or an African alliance against malaria.
US Ambassador Susan Rice earlier in the day had tried to sidestep the memo, signed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, directing US Ambassadors to collect computer passwords and even frequent flyer miles account numbers of other Security Council members and UN bureaucrats and force commanders.
But in the Delegates' Dining Room some eight hours later, several African Ambassadors asked Inner City Press how the US could have allowed this to happen.
“Did you see what they did to Yemen's President?” one of them asked, referring to the cable by then US ambassador Stephen Seche which quotes President Ali Abdullah Saleh telling US General David Petraeus, "We'll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours.”
“The whiskey thing is not going to help him,” said another, at an end with an open bar with Jack Daniels and Finlandia vodka. After several drinks talk turns to Libya's Gaddafi and his Ukrainian companion, whom the US turned back from the General Debate in New York in September. That the leaked US cable has her talking to Ukrainian diplomats might end the relationship right there, one predicted.
Over in the General Assembly lobby at the Gaza event there was no liquor, only lamb chops and raw tuna on crackers. Inner City Press tried to follow a diplomat from Belgium, the country which both hosts US nuclear weapons and was offered “low cost” prestige if it took those released from Guantanamo Bay.
But he disappeared into the crowd, to which Permanent Observer Riyad Mansour gave a speech as UNRWA's John Ging beamed. The cables predict that Abbas will not long hold his post.
Most of the countries whose Permanent Representatives Inner City Press managed to speak with were most surprised that anyone other than at the highest levels of the Obama administration would have had access to this breadth of information.
Some speculated, as is common at the UN, that Israel is behind it, since the cable point the finger at Iran. One even noted that the timing lifts some pressure on North Korea. That UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is again out of town when news hits was not viewed as surprising. Nor was the implication that the US expects another candidate to emerge in 2012. Watch this site.
