WASHINGTON/LONDON/NEW YORK: Saudi King Abdullah called President Asif Ali Zardari the greatest obstacle to Pakistan’s progress, according to an online report of New York Times that quoted Wikileaks as saying.
The report further quoted King Abdullah as saying, “When the head is rotten, it affects the whole body.”
The cables released by Wikileaks, quote King Abdullah as speaking to another Iraqi official about Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, “You and Iraq are in my heart, but that man is not.”
In the torrent of US cables detailing a wide array of potentially explosive diplomatic episodes, WikiLeaks said the US has mounted a highly secret effort since 2007, so far unsuccessful, to remove from a Pakistani research reactor highly enriched uranium that American officials fear could be diverted for use in an illicit nuclear device.
In May 2009, Ambassador Anne W Patterson reported that Pakistan was refusing to schedule a visit by American technical experts because, as a Pakistani official said, “if the local media got word of the fuel removal, ‘they certainly would portray it as the United States taking Pakistan’s nuclear weapons,’ he argued.”
In a particular release regarding former president Pervez Musharraf, WikiLeaks said in an August 17 meeting, Israeli Mossad Chief Meir Dagan thanked Under Secretary Burns for America’s support of Israel as evidenced by the previous day’s signing of an MOU that provides Israel with $30 billion in security assistance from 2008-2018.
Dagan provided his assessment of the Middle East region, Pakistan and Turkey, stressing Israel’s (a) concern for Musharraf’s well-being, (b) view that Iran can be forced to change its behavior, and (c) sense that Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are unstable with unclear futures ahead of them.
Dagan said he was concerned about how long Pakistani President Musharraf would survive. “He is facing a serious problem with the militants. Pakistan’s nuclear capability could end up in the hands of an Islamic regime.”
The cables detail plans to reunite the Korean peninsula after the North’s eventual collapse, according to The New York Times.
The cables also detail fresh suspicions about Afghan corruption, Saudi donors financing Al Qaeda, and the US failure to prevent Syria from providing a massive stockpile of weapons to the Lebanese Hezbollah militia since 2006.
The cables say when Afghanistan’s vice president visited the UAE last year, local authorities working with the Drug Enforcement Administration discovered that he was carrying $52 million in cash. With wry understatement, a cable from the American embassy in Kabul called the money “a significant amount” that the official, Ahmed Zia Massoud, “was ultimately allowed to keep without revealing the money’s origin or destination.” (Massoud denies taking any money out of Afghanistan.)
Saudi donors remain the chief financiers of militant groups like Al Qaeda, and the tiny Persian Gulf state of Qatar, a generous host to the American military for years, was the
“worst in the region” in counterterrorism efforts, according to a State Department cable last December.
