Manmohan misleading public: Assange

NEW DELHI: The head of whistleblower website WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, accused Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday of deliberately misleading the public by claiming that leaked US diplomatic cables allegedly pointing to payoffs to MPs during a 2008 parliamentary trust vote were not authentic.

"The comments I have been hearing from Prime Minister Singh these, to me, seem to be a deliberate attempt to mislead the public by suggesting that governments around the world do not accept the material," WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange told in an interview to a leading TV channel.

As per the WikiLeaks cables published in newspaper, 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 UPA government.

The prime minister said in parliament that the government could not "confirm the veracity, contents or even the existence of such communications", and added that many persons mentioned in the cables have "stoutly denied the veracity of the contents".

Assange asserted that there "is no doubt, whatsoever, that the cables are authentic", which was the reason why the US government has been very upset over the leak of the diplmomatic cables