Wikileaks' release set to embarrass many world leaders

Whistle-blower website WikiLeaks is releasing US diplomatic cables and messages, half of them calssified as secret, despite Washington's warning not to do so.

But some of the leaks about the documents point to some world leaders who will be embarrassed by the revelations as how the US diplomats perceived them.

The revelations, which Wikileaks claimed would redefine history, will certainly change the attitude of all the nations towards Washington. This will force a new veil in bilateral and multilateral diplomacy, even among the so-called allies of the US.

Some of the names making rounds are former South African president Nelson Mandela, Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai and Libya's Colonel Gaddafi and former UK premier Gordon Brown.

Here are some early insights so far revealed:

* Former South African President Nelson Mandela criticized George Bush over the Iraq war, saying he ignored the UN decision because the then Secretary-General Kofi Annan was a black. He even named the then British Prime Minister Tony Blair the foreign minister of the US as he supported the US adventure, said Daily Mail. Ironically, Bush himself in his recently released book regretted the decision to attack Iraq.

* Another former prime minister of Britain Gordon Brown was depicted as a weak leader in the despatches from London-based US diplomats, according to a report in Daily Express. In another document, the US diplomats were upset with the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, a Libyan national, from a Scottish jail last year.

* Simon Hoggart, a journalist from The Guardian - one of the partner newspapers of Wikileaks that is likely to publish the leaks on Sunday night - told BBC that even current Prime Minister David Cameroon was not spared by the Obama administration. There is going to be some embarrassment certainly for Gordon Brown but even more so for David Cameron who was not very highly regarded by the Obama administration or by the US ambassador here, he said.

* The documents say Turkey helped terrorist group al-Qaeda in Iraq, said al-Hayat, a London-based daily. Turkey denied the report. But other reports point out the invovlement of the CIA in helping the PKK rebels in Turkey.