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Reykjavik (AFP) Oct 18, 2010 Whistleblowing website WikiLeaks will not publish some 400,000 secret reports on the Iraq war on Monday as had been widely rumoured, but they would be available "very soon", a spokesman said. "There are rumours that have been floating around for some time, there is nothing you can do about it, they're obviously not correct. I can confirm that there's nothing coming out today," Kristinn Hrafnsson, a close collaborator of founder Julian Assange, told AFP. "I can say with certainty that WikiLeaks will publish something very soon. We don't comment on what we are working on and don't give any exact dates," he said. Assange also refused to give an exact date for the publication of the documents. "WikiLeaks does not speak about upcoming releases dates," he wrote in an online article, the authenticity of which was confirmed by Hrafnsson. "Indeed, with very rare exceptions we do not communicate any specific information about upcoming releases, since that simply provides fodder for abusive organisations to get their spin machines ready," he said. The Pentagon scoured through an Iraq war database Monday to prepare for potential fallout from an expected release by WikiLeaks of some 400,000 secret military reports. The massive release is set to dwarf the whistleblower website's publication of 77,000 classified US military documents on the war in Afghanistan in July, including the names of Afghan informants and other details from raw intelligence reports. Assange was on Monday denied a permit to live and work in Sweden, where he is being investigated after a complaint of rape filed by two Swedish women in August. He denies any wrongdoing. WikiLeaks has not identified the source of the documents it obtained but suspicion has fallen on Bradley Manning, a US Army intelligence analyst who is currently in military custody. Manning was arrested in May following the release by WikiLeaks of video footage of a US Apache helicopter strike in Iraq in which civilians died and has been charged with delivering defence information to an unauthorised source.
earlier related report "News organizations should be cautioned not to facilitate the leaking of classified documents with this disreputable organization known as WikiLeaks," Pentagon spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan told reporters. Lapan said publishing the classified records "provide a veneer of legitimacy to WikiLeaks." He added however that so far no news organization has indicated it intends to cooperate with WikiLeaks, in what would be the second planned massive online document dump by the renegade website. "We have not been approached specifically by news organizations about the release," Lapan said. He made his remarks as defense officials on Monday scoured through an Iraq war database to prepare for potential fallout from an expected release by WikiLeaks of some 400,000 secret military reports. The massive release, expected possibly early this week, would dwarf the whistleblower website's publication of 77,000 classified US military documents on the war in Afghanistan in July, which included the names of Afghan informants and other details from raw intelligence reports. An Icelandic spokesman for WikiLeaks said the website would not publish any reports on the Iraq war on Monday, but would make new documents public "very soon." "There are rumours that have been floating around for some time, there is nothing you can do about it, they're obviously not correct. I can confirm that there's nothing coming out today," Kristinn Hrafnsson told AFP. "I can say with certainty that WikiLeaks will publish something very soon," the close collaborator of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange added. "We don't comment on what we are working on and don't give any exact dates," he said. To prepare for the anticipated release of sensitive intelligence on the US-led Iraq war, Pentagon officials set up a 120-person taskforce several weeks ago to comb through the database and "determine what the possible impacts might be," a Pentagon spokesman said. WikiLeaks has not identified the source of the documents it obtained but suspicion has fallen on Bradley Manning, a US Army intelligence analyst who is currently in military custody. Manning was arrested in May following the release by WikiLeaks of video footage of a US Apache helicopter strike in Iraq in which civilians died and has been charged with delivering defense information to an unauthorized source.
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Iraq's Maliki in Iran as premiership rival cries foulTehran (AFP) Oct 18, 2010 Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was in Tehran on Monday to garner support for his premiership bid, as his chief rival Iyad Allawi accused Iran of meddling in Baghdad's political affairs. Maliki flew to Tehran from Amman and went straight into a series of meetings, including with Iran's first vice president Mohammad Reza Rahimi and with supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to ... read more |
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