Indian PM
seems to be misleading public on cables: WikiLeaks chief
Monday March 21, 2011 09:22:56 PM,
IANS
|
New Delhi: The head of
whistleblower website WikiLeaks Monday accused Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh of deliberately misleading the public by claiming
that leaked US diplomatic cables allegedly pointing to payoffs to
MPs during a 2008 parliamentary trust vote were not authentic.
"The comments I have been hearing from Prime Minister Singh these,
to me, seem to be a deliberate attempt to mislead the public by
suggesting that governments around the world do not accept the
material," Wikileaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange told NDTV's
Pranoy Roy in an interview.
As per the WikiLeaks cables published in The Hindu, a US diplomat
was told that Rs.50-60 crore was kept aside by the Congress party to
get some opposition members of the Lok Sabha on board before the
trust vote in July 2008 during the first tenure of the United
Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.
The prime minister said in parliament that the government could not
"confirm the veracity, contents or even the existence of such
communications", and added that many persons mentioned in the cables
have "stoutly denied the veracity of the contents".
Assange asserted that there "is no doubt, whatsoever, that the
cables are authentic", which was the reason why the US government
has been very upset over the leak of the diplomatic cables.
He said that there was "no doubt that these are bonafide reports
sent by the American ambassador (in India) back to Washington and
these should be seen in that context".
"That does not mean every fact in them are correct, you have to look
at their sources and how they have this information," added Assange.
He said that the defence argument was "actually the behaviour of
guilty men".
"A man who is innocent doesn't tend to behave like that. That
doesn't mean people making those statements, like Prime Minister
Singh and so on, are guilty of this particular crime. It suggests
something that how Indian parliamentarianss and politicians respond
to very serious allegations. They respond through indirection and
attempting to cover up the issue for the public rather than address
it fully and frankly," Assange asserted.
He felt that if the cable on bribery was incorrect, the US envoy in
India "has a lot to answer" for sending cables to Washington "about
senior politicians and the behaviour of Indian parliaments, which is
cast in very negative light".
"Either he has committed a grave error that would damage Indian and
American relations and should resign on that matter; or the report
was correct and he was reporting correctly and he had checked his
fact before reporting back to Washington," Assange said.
He suspected that the "most serious issue in the cable, I suspect,
is yet to be revealed". "There is quite a bit of time to go through
the material: the material from Pakistan, China. It is likely to be
of interest to the Indian population," he said.
There are about 6,000 cables from the US embassy in India.
"What we are looking at more carefully are the cables from Pakistan
and those are something that are yet to be published. We are working
to have those published," he said.
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