'Clinton asked US diplomats to spy on Indians over UNSC seat'

United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described India as a “self-appointed front-runner” for a permanent United Nations Security Council (UNSC) seat and directed US envoys to seek minute details about Indian diplomats stationed at the United Nations headquarters, according to classified documents released by WikiLeaks today.

In a potentially damaging disclosure, the whistle-blower website released a “secret” cable issued by Clinton on July 31, 2009, as part of its massive leak of a quarter million classified documents of the American government.

The cable, posted by The New York Times, gave directions to US diplomats to collect information on key issues like reform of the UN Security Council and Indo-US civilian nuclear deal and pass it on to the intelligence agencies, including foreign associates’ credit card and frequent-flier numbers that could be used to track a person’s movements.

It asked US diplomats to ascertain deliberations regarding the UNSC expansion among key groups of countries like “self-appointed front-runners” for permanent UNSC seats — India, Brazil, Germany and Japan (Group of Four or G-4); Uniting for Consensus group — especially Mexico, Italy and Pakistan — that opposes additional permanent UNSC seats; African Group; and European Union, as well as key UN officials within the Secretariat and the UN General Assembly Presidency.

It also sought biographical and biometric information on key NAM/G-77/OIC (Organisation of Islamic Countries) permanent representatives, particularly China, Cuba, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, South Africa, Sudan, Uganda, Senegal and Syria; and information on their relationships with their capitals.

The cable also wanted to know about members’ plans for plenary meetings of the Nuclear Suppliers Group; views on the US-India civil nuclear cooperation initiative; besides members’ views on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty; prospects for country ratifications and entry into force.

The New York Times said the leaked cable gave a laundry list of instructions for how state department employees can fulfil the demands of a “National Humint Collection Directive” in specific countries. Humint being the spy-world jargon for human intelligence collection.

One cable asks officers overseas to gather information about “office and organisational titles; names, position titles and other information on business cards; numbers of telephones, cellphones, pagers and faxes,” as well as “internet and intranet handles, internet e-mail addresses, web site identification-URLs; credit card account numbers; frequent-flier account numbers; work schedules, and other relevant biographical information,” it said.

Among the secret US documents released by WikiLeaks, a total of 3,038 classified cables are from the American embassy in New Delhi, the details of which were not immediately available, mainly because of inaccessibility to the website that was experiencing heavy traffic.

A breakdown indicates that as many as 2,278 cables are from the US mission in Kathmandu, 3,325 from Colombo and 2,220 from Islamabad. These cables are often candid and sometimes personal assessment of the day to day events, functioning and meetings of US diplomats.