By IANS,
New Delhi : WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has said that the response of the Indian government to the leaked US diplomatic cables was one of the worst in the world and left much to be desired.
In an interview to Times Now editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami, Assange said there are Indian names among those allegedly having secret bank accounts abroad.
“Yes, there are Indian names in the data we have published or are going to publish…There is no reason why India should not be aggressive. In fact maybe, it should be more aggressive because India seems like it is losing much more per capita tax money than Germany,” he said.
Asked if Indian viewers should lose hope that names will come out at one point, Assange said that they should not lose hope.
“That you should absolutely not lose hope. It is quite interesting…There are different forces at play here. The German government in particular has been very strong. There needs to be transparency in banking operations.”
Assange said that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s reaction to WikiLeaks expose was not to fully and frankly investigate, but an attempt to spin the issue.
“I agree with you that the response by the government left a lot to be desired. Before it was clear to me that Prime Minister Mr. Singh was deliberately attempting to mislead the Indian people on what type of material this was.
“People tell me that he is not personally corrupt, I do not know myself as I don’t have information on that. But, his reaction left a lot to be desired.
“It wasn’t to fully and frankly investigate what was going on and then provide finding to the parliament. Rather, it was attempt to spin the issue and I suspect that has come from experience in dealing with similar scandals in the past,” the head of the whistleblower website said.
However, he added that the Indian government not responding comprehensively does not necessarily mean that they have vested interests in trying to shut the issue.
“So the absence of the Indian government to comprehensively respond does not necessarily mean that they will not or they have all sorts of vested interest in trying to shut the issue.
“A large part of it, no doubt, is that they have many fires to put out like all big institutions. So they simply put out the biggest fires they can and then they turn their consideration to the smaller ones,” he said.
He added that corruption must become the central issue of the nation so that the government cannot simply give small concessions or small investigations or push something off to a parliamentary committee.
“But that actually seems to be on the cards for India,” he said.
Asked about government’s contention that the cables were not verifiable, Assange said it was a clear attempt to mislead people.
“We have dealt with over 60 different countries in relation to the cables we have released. The Indian government’s response was one of the worst in the world.
“The other countries have come out and said that on that particular issue revealed by the cables we say we had a defence. There was no questioning whether the cables themselves were legitimate and needed to be responded to,” he said and added that cables have not been questioned at all.
As per the WikiLeaks cables published in The Hindu, a US diplomat was told that Rs.50-60 crore was kept aside by the Congress party to get some opposition members of the Lok Sabha on board before the trust vote in July 2008 during the first tenure of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.