WikiLeaks cables, day 19: summary of today's key points

Day 19, Friday 17 December The Guardian In a 2009 meeting, the Dalai Lama told the US ambassador to India that climate change in Tibet should outweigh political concerns on the global agenda and expressed disquiet over Chinese energy policies. Embassy cables also note US fears that the Dalai Lama's influence over Tibetans in India is waning as more militant elements emerge. A series of cables from the US embassy in Delhi reveal US attempts to build a relationship with Rahul Gandhi , son of the leader of the Congress party and a rising star in Indian politics. Gandhi expressed concern over Hindu extremists while Indian government officials consistently complain that the US is soft on Pakistan and are keen to present Indian foreign policy as free from American influence. US diplomats asked India to send Bollywood stars to Afghanistan in an attempt to increase India's use of 'soft power' in the region, in a plan that was never implemented. India fears an early US and British withdrawal from Afghanistan, with particular anxiety that an accommodation will be reached with the Taliban. US officials in Sri Lanka hold President Rajapaksa and former army commander Sarath Fonseka responsible for blocking an inquiry into army actions in the last months of the civil war, and believe that the Sri Lankan government was complicit with paramilitaries in the conflict. Le Monde In spite of an official freeze of relations between Cuba and the US, a cable from 2009 shows that the two countries do have regular contact . Respective defence officials meet monthly near Guantánamo Bay. The Cuban goverment is torn between isolation and closer links with the US. Deputy assistant secretary Bisa Williams visited Cuba in September 2009. However the arrest of an American citizen for spying in Cuba in December last year cooled relations between the two countries. A cable dated February 2009 comments on the dire economic situation of Cuba and of lack of guarantees for foreign investors as the country insists on being the main shareholder of companies set up there. The rise in bankruptcies is such that the financial situation could hit a real crisis by 2012. El País The Portuguese foreign minister, Luís Amado, rejected claims by the CIA in a confidential cable that his country had given permission to the US to use the Lajes air base in the Azores. American rendition flights used the base in order to repatriate prisoners from Guantánamo Bay. According to cables dated 2007, the US considers the Spanish region of Catalonia and its capital Barcelona as the hotbed of Islamist extremism in the Mediterranean . They decided it needed special monitoring and established a counter-terrorism and crimefighting centre based in the Barcelona consulate.