Washington, Nov. 28: The US sought minute details of personal information about foreign diplomats, including from India, stationed at the UN headquarters and also issued directions to collect information from them on key issues like the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal and reform of the Security Council, classified US documents released by Wikileaks reveal.
The cable in this regard, classified as "secret" was issued by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on July 31, 2009, in which a directive was issued to American diplomats to collect information to pass on to the intelligence agencies, including foreign associates' credit card and frequent flyer numbers that could be used to track a person's movements.
The New York Times said the cables give a laundry list of instructions for how State Department employees can fulfill the demands of a "National Humint Collection Directive" in specific countries.
Humint being spy-world jargon for human intelligence collection.
One cable asks officers overseas to gather information about "office and organisational titles; names, position titles and other information on business cards; numbers of telephones, cellphones, pagers and faxes," as well as "internet and intranet handles, internet e-mail addresses, web site identification-URLs; credit card account numbers; frequent-flier account numbers; work schedules, and other relevant biographical information," it said.
The cable posted by The New York Times asks the American diplomats to ascertain international deliberations regarding UNSC expansion among key groups of countries like self-appointed frontrunners for permanent UNSC membership -- Brazil, Germany, India, and Japan (the Group of Four or G-4); the Uniting for Consensus group especially Mexico, Italy, and Pakistan that opposes additional permanent UNSC seats; the African Group; and the European Union, as well as key UN officials within the Secretariat and the UN General Assembly (UNGA) Presidency.
It also seeks, biographical and biometric information on key NAM/G-77/OIC (Organisation of Islamic Countries) permanent representatives, particularly China, Cuba, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, South Africa, Sudan, Uganda, Senegal, and Syria; information on their relationships with their capitals.
It also wanted to know about member plans for plenary meetings of the Nuclear Suppliers Group; views of the US-India Civil Nuclear Cooperation Initiative; besides member views on the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT); prospects for country ratifications and entry into force.