Karzai Says Leaks Threaten Lives of Afghan Informants

(July 29) -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai today condemned the identification of Afghan informants to NATO forces in classified documents released by the WikiLeaks website as "extremely irresponsible and shocking."

The informants' lives will now be in danger, whether the informants acted "legitimately or illegitimately," Karzai said at a Kabul news conference, adding that it was "an act that cannot be overlooked."

There are fears that the informants whose names were released could be targeted by insurgents, Reuters reported.

Karzai said he had ordered government agencies to search through the released documents to see if they contained anything else that could damage Afghanistan, or whether there was information that could help in the fight against the Taliban.

The Pentagon has also assigned officers to comb through all the data for fear it could endanger U.S. troops and compromise NATO's mission to train Afghan forces and defeat Taliban fighters.

The papers also raise questions about Pakistan's commitment to doing all it can to defeat the Taliban, given allegations that Pakistan's intelligence agency was secretly helping the insurgency.

Today Karzai suggested that the U.S.-led NATO forces were unwilling to strike against militant bases in Pakistan. "The question now is why they are not taking action," he said.

However, Vice President Joe Biden said U.S. forces were inflicting "significant damage" on the al-Qaida terrorist network in Pakistan. In an interview recorded on Wednesday that was shown today on NBC, Biden also said the documents released by WikiLeaks date back to before the Obama administration took office.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told NBC's "Today" show on Wednesday that he had held back publication of 15,000 documents that contained contact information and that they would be subject to "a very detailed review." He conceded he would consider it "collateral damage" if somebody named in the papers was executed, saying it would be a mistake "we would take very seriously."

He was responding to a London Times report that said the lives of hundreds of Afghans -- alleged informants as well as their families -- may have been put in danger by the WikiLeaks release.

Assange said he had seen the newspaper's report and was taking the allegations seriously. He also said the 15,000 papers were withheld "because a very few number mention the names of local Afghans who might have been subject to retribution."

"We decided to pause and study these documents further," he added Wednesday at a London meeting of journalists.

Assange said he didn't know the identity of the person who leaked the military documents. The leading suspect is Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, who was charged in July with passing on confidential information to WikiLeaks.

Maj. Gen. John Campbell, head of the 101st Airborne Division, said today the leaks had not changed the conduct of military operations,

"I can see that there will be a detriment down the road," Campbell told reporters via satellite from Afghanistan. He added that most of the information he had seen was "not new news," Agence France-Presse reported.