Russia sees Pak as biggest threat, says US cable

MOSCOW: Russia views Pakistan as the “greatest” potential threat to the regional stability and has de facto imposed embargo on the sale of weapons to Islamabad, according to a secret US diplomatic cable leaked by vestibules WikiLeaks website.

In his ‘secret’ dispatch, US Ambassador to Moscow William J Burns said Russia views Pakistan as the greatest potential threat to regional stability and Russian Foreign Minister ruling out weapons sales to Pakistan as far back as 2003.

“Russian decision-making process has led to a de facto embargo on weapons transfers to Iraq, where Russia is concerned over leakages to Iraqi insurgents and al-Qaeda; to a hands-off policy towards Pakistan, the country Russia views as the greatest potential threat to regional stability (with then-Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov ruling out weapons sales to Pakistan as far back as 2003),” Burns communicated in dispatch to Washington in October 2007.

Burns wrote: “While Russian experts still downplay the ability of the US to displace Russia in the Indian arms market, for reasons of cost and the legacy of decades’ old dependence, they recognise increasing American inroads and growing influence. Senior officials maintain that Russia does take into account the impact on the stability of the region in determining whether to sell weapons and shares our concern about weapons falling into terrorists’ hands.”

A new set of leaked cables published by London’s ‘Observer’ newspaper, meanwhile, showed that US ambassador to Beijing Jon Huntsman in a secret despatch on China’s ‘newly pugnacious’ foreign policy, said Beijing is “losing friends worldwide”. The European diplomats were “most vocal” about China’s aggressive posture in recent years, while Indian and Japanese envoys voiced similar “complaints,” Huntsman’s cable said.

“Numerous third-country diplomats have complained to us that dealing with China has become more difficult in the past year,” the US envoy said in his February report, quoting among others Indian ambassador S Jaishankar.Huntsman accused Beijing of “muscle-flexing, triumphalism and assertiveness,” but added that some observers saw it as a rhetoric designed to appeal to Chinese public opinion.

He said a British diplomat complained saying that Chinese officials’ behaviour at the Copenhagen climate change summit in December last year was “shocking” and so rude and arrogant that the UK and French complained formally.

The Indian Ambassador to Beijing requested closer cooperation with the US because of “China’s more aggressive approach.”