Dec. 10, 2010 (The Independent) -- Julian Assange may claim that WikiLeaks' disclosure of US documents is for the good of the world, but in Lebanon they have had an incendiary effect. The Hezbollah party is using the cables as proof of UN involvement with Washington – and thus, by extension, with Israel – and politicians are desperately denying that they gave intelligence information to the Americans about Hezbollah's secret communications system.
For weeks, the Hezbollah's secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, has been denouncing the UN's tribunal into the murder of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri as an American-Israeli plot. He says that anyone giving security information to the Americans is an Israeli spy.
Beirut newspapers have devoted pages to the unexpurgated US cables, in which Lebanese officials revealed the names of suspected assassins to American diplomats, an act which – in this country – can end in a flowered coffin and crocodile tears from the murderers. Mercifully, opposing sides in Lebanon have chosen to accept the weird and unbelievable denials of those involved. An outbreak of violence would be blamed on the Americans, not on WikiLeaks.
The UN tribunal's forthcoming accusations – which may be mercifully delayed – have already caused the Beirut government to divide into opposing camps. Now the US cables reveal that the UN has indeed been cooperating with the United States, asking for aerial reconnaissance pictures of the Bekaa Valley and sending DNA samples from Mr Hariri's suspected killer, Ahmad Abu Adass, to FBI headquarters for examination.
