World Crisis Online

div id=”article-text” class=”noembed”> Javier Villagarcía, euronews: to get the reaction from Europe about this huge document leak, we cross now to Madrid.

El País is one of the five newspapers with access to the Wikileaks cache of secret documents from the US administration. The Director of the spanish newspaper, Javier Moreno, said that after this nothing will be the same again:

Mr. Moreno, what is going to change?

Mr. Javier Moreno: “The State Department and the US Government are presenting themselves as the main victims of this leak, but I think that the main victims are really all the hundreds of people who went to the US embassies in several countries over the past few years, to have lunch or dinner with diplomats or with american ambassadors . These people gave their opinions freely and, more importantly, relevant information to the american diplomatic machinery”

Euronews: What do you think the consequences will be for the Obama administration?

Mr. Moreno: “This is going to impact in two areas. Firstly, the working of the diplomatic machinery will become much more complicated. From now on it is going to be very difficult to work like they are used to. This has shown that they are unable to respect the confidentiality of communications with their informants and high level diplomats in the countries where they are working and with allies. This is the first impact in terms of damage.

Secondly, it could promote tensions and even a diplomatic crisis between the USA and some of its allies, countries that US diplomats are talking about in an unguarded way that can only result in damage once it is made public.

Euronews: The White House and many european leaders have said that the release of the secret documents is irresponsible. What do you think about this reaction?

Mr. Moreno: “Well I think that we, the newspapers, carry a lot of responsibility. Firstly, it is up to us to pass on genuine and important information to our citizens and the society at large to allow them to make informed judgements about their government’s policy. As journalists, we have a big responsibility that situations like this, which might embarrass governments, are exposed nonetheless.”

Euronews: Javier Moreno, director of El Pais, thank you.

Mr. Moreno: Javier, thank you.

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