Sri Lanka to obtain Wikileaks contents

The Sri Lankan government is in the process of obtaining the United States diplomatic cable messages relating to Sri Lanka among over 200,000 messages released by WikiLeaks over the last weekend.

The External Affairs Ministry in a statement released yesterday said it was in the process of obtaining the contents of the documents allegedly pertaining to Sri Lanka put in the public domain by WikiLeaks.

The Ministry said that though in principle, it does not wish to comment publicly on privileged communications of a foreign government; if the contents revealed any material relevant to Sri Lanka’s interests, the Ministry would take them up through diplomatic channels.

The Ministry of External Affairs said it does not condone the act of putting privileged and confidential information in the public domain in an illegal manner.

Interestingly, the cable messages on Sri Lanka are relatively much higher compared to other countries.

According to WikiLeaks there were 112 secret messages, 1,680 confidential messages, and 1,533 unclassified messages originating from the U.S. Embassy in Colombo.

The U.S. Ambassador to Colombo Patricia Butenis was quick to condemn the leak and said the U.S. has worked hard to assist the government and people of Sri Lanka to strengthen security, to further economic development, and to foster political reconciliation.

The Ambassador promptly pointed out that the people of good faith will recognise internal reports of diplomatic missions do not represent the U.S. government’s official foreign policy and they are only one element of many that shape the foreign policy. (Colombo Page)