Wikileaks to ignore warnings over files

WIKILEAKS will soon publish its remaining 15,000 Afghan war documents, despite warnings from the US government, the organisation's founder said yesterday.

The Pentagon has said that secret information will be even more damaging to security and risk more lives than WikiLeaks' initial release of some 76,000 war documents.

"This organisation will not be threatened by the Pentagon or any other group," WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said during a visit to Sweden. "We proceed cautiously and safely with this material."

He said WikiLeaks was about halfway though a "line-by-line review" of the 15,000 documents and expected to publish them within weeks. Assange said "innocent parties who are under reasonable threat" would be redacted from the material.

The first documents released in WikiLeaks' "Afghan War Diary" laid bare classified military documents covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010.

The release angered US officials, energised critics of the Nato-led campaign, and drew the attention of the Taleban, which has promised to use the material to track down people it considers traitors.

That has aroused the concern of several human rights group operating in Afghanistan and the Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, which has accused WikiLeaks of recklessness. Jean-Francois Julliard, the group's secretary-general, said WikiLeaks showed "incredible irresponsibility" when posting the documents online.

Assange was in Sweden to investigate claims that the website was not covered by laws protecting anonymous sources in the Scandinavian country.