WikiLeaks cables, day 5: summary of today's key points
There are no fewer than 251,287 cables from more than 250 US embassies around the world, obtained by WikiLeaks. We present a day-by-day guide to the revelations from the US embassy cables both from the Guardian and its international media partners in the story
Day 5, Friday 3 December
Guardian
• The British military was criticised for failing to establish security in Sangin by the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, and the US commander of Nato troops, according to diplomatic cables.
• Rampant government corruption in Afghanistan is revealed by the cables, including an incident last year when the then vice-president, Ahmad Zia Massoud, was stopped and questioned in Dubai when he flew into the emirate with $52m in cash.
• Gordon Brown was written off as prime minister by the US embassy in London a year into his premiership. It concluded that an "abysmal track record" had left him lurching from "political disaster to disaster", according to cables released by WikiLeaks. He briefly earned some praise when he led the recapitalising of banks after the collapse of Lehman Brothers but within months his government was deemed a "sinking ship". Brown's international initiatives, from food summits to global disarmament and a UK national security council, were treated with indifference bordering on disdain by the Americans, according to US embassy cables.
• The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, is erratic, emotional and prone to believing paranoid conspiracy theories, according to frustrated diplomats and foreign statesmen. He has also been accused by his own ministers of complicity in criminal activity, including ordering the physical intimidation of the top official in charge of leading negotiations with the Taliban.
• US diplomats have reported suspicions that Silvio Berlusconi could be "profiting personally and handsomely" from secret deals with the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, according to cables released by WikiLeaks. They centre on allegations that the Italian leader has been promised a cut of huge energy contracts. Another memo quoted a friend of Berlusconi saying the Italian prime minister's fondness for partying had taken a physical and political toll on him.
• American officials dismissed British protests about secret US spy flights taking place from the UK's Cyprus airbase, amid concerns from Labour ministers, upset about rendition flights going on behind their backs, that the UK would be an unwitting accomplice to torture.
• The British Foreign Office misled parliament over the plight of thousands of islanders who were expelled from their Indian Ocean homeland – the British colony of Diego Garcia – to make way for a large US military base, according to secret US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks. It has privately admitted its latest plan to declare the islands the world's largest marine protection zone will end any chance of them being repatriated. Publicly ministers have claimed the proposed park would have no effect on the islanders' right of return.
• The cables reveal Washington's opinion on Gordon Brown's potential successors. David Miliband was deemed "too brainy", Alan Johnson had a "lack of killer instinct" and Harriet Harman was a "policy lightweight but an adept interparty operator".
• A scandal involving foreign contractors employed to train Afghan policemen who took drugs and paid for young "dancing boys" to entertain them in northern Afghanistan caused such panic that the interior minister begged the US embassy to try to "quash" the story, according a US embassy cable. The Afghan government feared the story, if published, would "endanger lives" and was particularly concerned that a video of the incident might be made public.
• The US military has been charging its allies a 15% handling fee on hundreds of millions of dollars being raised internationally to build up the Afghan army. Germany has threatened to cancel contributions, raising concerns that money is going to the US treasury.
• Iran is financing a range of Afghan religious and political leaders, grooming Afghan religious scholars, training Taliban militants and even seeking to influence MPs, according to cables from the US embassy in Kabul.
• The US has lost faith in the Mexican army's ability to win the country's drugs war, branding it slow, clumsy and no match for "sophisticated" narco-traffickers.
• The US is convinced that Ahmed Wali Karzai, the Afghan president's younger half-brother and a senior figure in Kandahar, is corrupt, according to embassy cables. He is described as dominating access to "economic resources, patronage and protection". Two of Hamid Karzai's brothers planned to ask for asylum in the US, while other family members stayed away and kept their money out of Afghanistan – so anxious were they that the Afghan president would lose last year's election.
• The Obama administration and Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, are determined to reject talks with Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, and have consistently worked to split his movement, according to US diplomatic cables. Karzai has sometimes publicly floated the idea of dialogue with Omar and other top Taliban, but the cables show his private position is the opposite.
• Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and Colombia's Álvaro Uribe "almost came to blows" at a Latin America unity summit, according to a US memo, which described it as "the worst expression of banana republic discourse".
• A Kremlin campaign to airbrush Stalin's role in Russian history by dictating how academics write about the past is only half-hearted, US diplomats believe. They also feel there are enough Russians striving to remember the purge victims to combat any rewrite. The cable concerns the so-called "history wars", a nationalist campaign to defend Russia's honour.
• Turkmenistan's president, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, is "vain, suspicious, guarded, strict, very conservative", a "micro-manager" and "a practised liar", US diplomats say.
• Four months before his death the Nobel-prize winning writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn offered qualified praise for Vladimir Putin, arguing that he was doing a better job as Russia's leader than Boris Yeltsin or Mikhail Gorbachev. Solzhenitsyn was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974 and returned to Russia 20 years later.
• Moldova's president offered a $10m (£6.4m) bribe to a political rival in a desperate bid to keep his defeated communist government in power, according to a secret US diplomatic cable.
New York Times
• Afghanistan emerges as a land where bribery, extortion and embezzlement are the norm. Describing the likely lineup of Afghanistan's new cabinet last January, the US embassy noted that the agriculture minister, Asif Rahimi, "appears to be the only minister that was confirmed about whom no allegations of bribery exist".
Der Spiegel
• Berlin was irritated by a 15% administration fee the US sought to charge Germany on a €50m donation made to a trust fund set up to improve the Afghan army. A top German diplomat complained the fee would be a tough sell to taxpayers.
• Mistrust between the US and the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, is very deep. Karzai is convinced the US has thrown its backing behind his rival Abdullah Abdullah.
• The close relationship between Italy's Silvio Berlusconi and Russia's Vladimir Putin is a source of unease for the US state department. The leaked cables contain allegations of personal business interests that both politicians deny.
• US diplomats are concerned about the growing power of Russian organised crime and believe it has contacts with the highest levels of government in Moscow.
Le Monde
• France is committed to staying the course in Afghanistan even though public opposition to the war and electoral considerations have weighed heavily on Nicolas Sarkozy. Amid concerns that the French president was trying to distance himself from the US to improve his popularity, Barack Obama was advised that a phone call to him could have a decisive impact. The US president was told: "Flattery would lead very far."
• Iran is extending its influence in Afghanistan in the same way it did in Iraq. It has been supporting insurgent groups as well as financially backing politicians. (guardian.co.uk)
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