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Source.
Mar 18, 2011 at 11:41am IST:
New Delhi: The United States Of America had tried to woo the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the cost of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition on the Indo-US civil nuclear deal issue.
According to the latest WikiLeaks cables reported by 'The Hindu' on Friday, Washington was so keen on a nuclear deal with India that its then ambassador David C Mulford worked to "put Sonia Gandhi in a box" by meeting and trying to woo the then leader of opposition LK Advani.
BBC
It describes how a senior Congress aide showed a US embassy official "chests of cash" to pay off MPs ahead of a vote over a controversial nuclear deal.
The cable by US official Steven White said that the embassy employee had met Nachiketa Kapur, an aide of senior Congress leader Satish Sharma.
It says that Mr Kapur told the embassy employee that "money was not an issue at all, but the crucial thing was to ensure that those who took the money would vote for the government".
The embassy employee said he was shown "two chests containing cash and said that around $25m (£15.5m) was lying around the house for use as pay-offs".
Asianage.com
New Delhi, Dec 18: The US embassy cables from here leaked by WikiLeaks provide "a revealing picture of Indo-US relations and the extent of US interference in India's domestic political affairs", the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) said today. "The manner in which the US embassy intervened to influence Indian political parties and opinion makers on the nuclear deal, the pressures on foreign policy matters such as the attitude towards Iran, are all laid out," it said in a statement.
"As the WikiLeaks cables from around the world have shown, the US pursues single-mindedly its imperialist interests. The unfortunate part is the complicity of the Manmohan Singh government in furthering some of these interests," the CPI-M said.
10. (S) Sharma's political aide Nachiketa Kapur mentioned to an Embassy staff member in an aside on July 16 that Ajit Singh's RLD had been paid Rupees 10 crore (about $2.5 million) for each of their four MPs to support the government. Kapur mentioned that money was not an issue at all, but the crucial thing was to ensure that those who took the money would vote for the government. Kapur showed the Embassy employee two chests containing cash and said that around Rupees 50-60 crore (about $25 million) was lying around the house for use as pay-offs. Source.
NEW DELHI: The Embassy of the United States on Thursday refused to comment on reported WikiLeaks disclosures that quoted one of its officials as saying that the Congress party had paid huge sums of money to lawmakers to win a confidence vote in parliament in 2008.
In a statement, a US Embassy spokesperson said: "The Department of State does not comment on materials, including classified documents, which may have been leaked. We cannot speak to the authenticity of any documents provided to the press."
Why would we not try to influence politics in countries on issues like this?
Just ebcause we ask or exert pressure doesnt mean the country will comply with US requests.
Source.
Washington: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described India as a "self-appointed front-runner" for a permanent UNSC seat and directed US envoys to seek minute details about Indian diplomats stationed at the United Nations headquarters, according to classified documents released by WikiLeaks on Monday.
In a potentially damaging disclosure, the whistle-blower website released a "secret" cable issued by Clinton on July 31, 2009, as part of its massive leak of a quarter million classified documents of the American government.
The cable posted by The New York Times gave directions to US diplomats to collect information on key issues like reform of the UN Security Council and Indo-US civilian nuclear deal and pass it on to the intelligence agencies, including on foreign associates' credit card and frequent-flier numbers that could be used to track a person's movements.