Washington:
Some world leaders expressed anger on Monday over the disclosures in confidential American diplomatic cables, even as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she was confident that the administration's diplomatic relationships would withstand the upheaval.
Mrs. Clinton's comments came as she prepared to set off on a trip to Central Asia and the Persian Gulf. There, she will encounter for the first time officials from countries that figure prominently in the diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks, an organization devoted to revealing government secrets, and published in The New York Times and European publications.
The cables included frank and unflattering characterizations of world leaders by American diplomats.
For example, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, was characterized in the cables as "risk averse and rarely creative," and Mrs. Clinton's counterpart in Germany, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, was dismissed as having little power. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy was described as "feckless" and "vain," while President Nicolas Sarkozy of France was called thin-skinned.
During a news conference, Mrs. Clinton said that many of her counterparts around the world had shrugged off any insults. One of them, she said, told her, "Don't worry about it. You should see what we say about you."
Israel said it found some measure of vindication in the revelations of regional dismay with Iran. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the documents supported Israel's assessments of Iran.
"There is not a huge gap between what we say behind closed doors and what we say openly," Mr. Netanyahu said, adding that such was not the case in other countries in the region. Some Arab leaders were quoted in the documents criticizing Iran and pushing the United States to take action against its suspected nuclear program, positions they would never take in public against a powerful neighbor.
Mr. Netanyahu refused to discuss a cable from the spring of 2009 that quoted Israel's defense minister, Ehud Barak, telling visiting American officials that a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities was viable until the end of 2010, but after that "any military solution would result in unacceptable collateral damage." Mr. Netanyahu said only that there was no doubt that the Iranian program was "progressing all the time."
Iraq also responded to the release of the cables, some of which quoted King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia speaking scathingly about the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, called the leaks "unhelpful and untimely." He said the revelations could damage Mr. Maliki's efforts to bring together a government in Iraq.
"We are going through a critical time, trying to form the long-awaited government," he said. "We hope it will not poison the overall atmosphere among Iraqi politicians and Iraqi leaders."
Iran, whose leadership and nuclear program were the subject of some of the most sensitive cables, issued the angriest response, accusing the United States of purposefully allowing the confidential diplomatic correspondence to become public.
The New York Times and the other news organizations that have been reporting on the diplomatic exchanges have so far published only a few hundred of the cables, out of about 250,000 obtained by WikiLeaks, and some of those The Times has posted have been redacted to address security concerns.
WikiLeaks has so far posted on its Web site only the cables that have been reviewed by and in some case redacted by The Times and the other news organizations; so far, the rest of the trove of cables remains unpublished.
On Friday, the Berlusconi government called the WikiLeaks release part of a "strategy" on the part of the United States and the foreign press to discredit Italy.
But on Sunday, Italy's foreign minister, Franco Frattini, changed the tone, saying that "the United States is the real victim of WikiLeaks. It's an action aimed at discrediting them," the ANSA news agency reported. The spokesman for the Italian Foreign Ministry, Maurizio Massari, confirmed the comments.
"In the same way that Sept. 11 changed the world from a security standpoint, the news released by WikiLeaks will change diplomatic relations between countries," Mr. Frattini said. He added that "just as an international coalition against terrorism was created the morning after Sept. 11," he hoped that countries would "get to work immediately to restore the climate of trust in world diplomacy."
A senior Pakistani diplomat said that whether or not the cables exposed secret talks between his country and the United States, confidence would be seriously shaken. "The WikiLeaks explosion of cables come at a time when some officials in Pakistan had started overcoming their distrust, and started talking frankly," said the official, adding that the leaks would "feed further paranoia."
Also on Monday, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said that his office was investigating the leaks. He declined to give details about the scope of the investigation, particularly whether one of its targets was WikiLeaks' founder, Julian Assange, whose Australian citizenship may put him out of reach of American law.
"Let me be very clear," Mr. Holder said. "It is not saber rattling. This is an active, ongoing investigation. To the extent that we can find anybody who was involved in the breaking of American law, and who has put at risk the assets and the people that I have described, they will be held responsible."