Day 16, Tuesday 14 December
The Guardian
• Britain's attempts to reach out to Muslim communities post 7/7 met with little success, according to US diplomats.
• RBS's new chairman, Sir Philip Hampton, admits that the bank's former directors failed to live up to their duties.
• Six months before the global financial crisis reached its peak the Bank of England governor, Mervyn King, had already developed a global bailout plan.
• US officials urged British banking regulators to take stronger action against Iranian Banks with suspected links to missile programmes.
• Cables from the Dublin embassy show the US was concerned about the state of Ireland's banks as far back as October 2008.
Der Speigel
• US diplomats struggled with the hierarchical and old-fashioned workings within the Vatican.
El País
• Since 2004, dozens of American embassy cables from Madrid, Rabat and Paris show the Spanish Socialist government had been secretly supporting Morocco in talks to regain control of the Western Sahara. PM Zapatero suggested the creation of an autonomous region along the lines of Catalonia in Spain. President Bouteflika of Algeria condemned the unexpected Spanish stance and the 20% price rise in gas exported to Spain was widely seen as a retaliation. The cables also showed that Spanish diplomats criticised President Chirac of France for being more pro-Moroccan than the Moroccans.
• Yasser Arafat's widow, Suha, complained to the US ambassador in Tunisia about the loss of her properties and Tunisian passport, blaming the wife of the Tunisian President, Leila Ben Ali. It turned out the reason for her daughter's and her expulsion was the fact she had contacted Jordan's Queen Rania to try and stop the marriage of Leila's niece to the Emir of Dubai, who was already married to the Jordanian king's sister.
Le Monde
• In 2007, the American ambassador in Egypt dares to call the government a dictatorship and foresees problems with President Hosni Mubarak's son, Gamal, succeeding his father as head of state. The Egyptian army profoundly dislikes Gamal, someone "who hasn't even finished his military service". The cables reveal a possibility of a coup d'etat should the president die without having established his succession.
New York Times
• Some diplomatic cables released by wikileaks convey a less 'hawkish' tone from the US embassies.
source: The Guardian
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