Iran’s Khamenei has cancer: Wikileaks (Reuters)
29 November 2010, 3:38 PM PARIS -
US diplomatic cables released by online whistle-blower Wikileaks include remarks from an Iran source in 2009 saying Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has terminal cancer, French daily Le Monde reported.
The source, a non-Iranian businessman based in Central Asia and travelling often to Tehran, “has learned from one of his contacts that (former president Ali Akbar) Rafsanjani told him Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has terminal stage leukaemia and could die in a few months”, according to an August 2009 cable.
The document, written by a US diplomat, says that Rafsanjani, a critic of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who has expressed sympathies with Iran’s reformist movement, decided on learning of Khamenei’s illness to start preparing himself to be a successor.
As Supreme Leader since 1989 Khamenei has final say on policy in the Islamic Republic, which is locked in a stand-off with key world powers over the nature of its nuclear activities.
The document cited by Le Monde is one of thousands of cables leaked by the Wikileaks website at the weekend that reveal confidential views and information from senior US diplomats overseas that would normally remain confidential for decades. Le Monde, one of a handful of newspapers around the world given access to the cables, said the Iran documents showed Washington relied on a network of Iran-watchers in the Middle East to shed light on a country it sees as an enigma.
The United States broke diplomatic relations with Iran 30 years ago after fundamentalist students in Iran seized the US Embassy in Tehran and held staff there hostage for 444 days.
Irans Khamenei has cancer: Wikileaks
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Leaked cables won’t strain Afghan-US ties: Karzai (Reuters)
29 November 2010, 3:41 PM KABUL -
Leaked diplomatic cables that describe President Hamid Karzai as “extremely weak” and his brother as a corrupt drug trafficker won’t strain ties with Washington, Karzai’s spokesman said on Wednesday.
The secret messages from Kabul to Washington also allege that a former vice-president fled the country with over $50 million in cash, cables and media reports about the cache of documents say.
Karzai’s spokesman shrugged off comments in the first round of leaks, but acknowledged there was still room for damage.
“It won’t have a noticeable effect on our broader strategic relationship with the US,” spokesman Waheed Omer told a news conference in Kabul.
“There is not much in the documents to surprise us and we don’t see anything substantive that will strain our relationship, but there is more still to come.”
Only a handful of over 250,000 documents given to a small group of international media have been released so far, but they paint a particularly negative picture of the President’s half brother Ahmad Wali Karzai, a major power broker in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar.
“While we must deal with AWK as the head of the Provincial Council, he is widely understood to be corrupt and a narcotics trafficker,” says one confidential cable from Kabul, dated October 2009 and signed off by Ambassador Karl Eikenberry.
The president himself appears to be dismissed as ineffectual prone to believing conspiracy theories.
“An extremely weak man who did not listen to facts but was instead easily swayed by anyone who came to report even the most bizarre stories or plots against him,” Britain’s Guardian newspaper quoted one undated cable description saying of the man who has ruled Afghanistan for nearly a decade.
Rifts well known
The US embassy in Kabul condemned the release but like Karzai said it would not affect the relationship.
“Our shared goals do not change based on the release of purported diplomatic reporting from the past,” Eikenberry said in a statement on Monday.
The harsh comments are unlikely to come as a surprise to many in Kabul, where tensions with the US are well known.
The most recent rift came ahead of the Lisbon summit earlier this month, when Karzai called for an end to NATO night raids. Top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan General David Petraeus said the comments seriously undermined the war effort.
But their publication may shake up the Kabul government.
“The documents are very important and sensitive in terms of governance in Afghanistan and will raise many questions,” said Wahid Mujhda, a Kabul-based political analyst and author.
The cables also accuse the younger Karzai, who has extensive business ties as well as his official post and has long been accused of amassing a fortune from the drugs trade, of lying.
“While he presented himself as a partner to the United States and is eager to be seen as helping the coalition, he also demonstrated that he will dissemble when it suits his needs,” a cable sent after a meeting in February this year said.
“He appears not to understand the level of our knowledge of his activities, and that the coalition views many of his activities as malign,” the report added.
Ahmad Wali Karzai referred comment on the cables to a lawyer who did not immediately respond. He has always strongly denied any involvement with narcotics and the Afghan president says the accusations against him have never been proved.
Leaked cables wont strain Afghan-US ties: Karzai
