The President of the ECOWAS Commission, Ambassador Victor Gbeho says the recent Wikileaks expos�s should serve as a lesson for government officials who recklessly relay vital information about Ghana to foreign diplomats.
According to Ambassador Gheho, who is a former Ghanaian foreign affairs minister, the Wikileaks expos�s signal how vulnerable a country can become if its officials unnecessary disclose information to others.
Speaking to Citifmonline.com, the seasoned diplomat said the leaking of the secret diplomatic cables should however not create disaffection between Ghana and her foreign partners. He also cautioned against the excessive politicization of the incident which he fears can polarize the country further.
�First of all, no one can undo what has been done, and spending a lot of time on it will be just diverting ourselves from the target of development for the country.
�But there is a lesson for everybody to learn, and that is that, those who make it a habit to go blabbing their mouths to foreign diplomats should know that it�s difficult to defend in public what you say to these diplomats in private, and therefore it is not a thing that one should do.
�I know that all countries try to collect as much information from the receiving country as possible. Ghana�s diplomats also do it in other countries, and so you cannot complain about this.
�But guarding your own secrets or extending respect to your leaders is a different thing altogether, and I think that the lesson that we should learn from this is to guard ourselves against unnecessary disclosures, we should guard ourselves becoming the agents of foreign intelligence organizations and we should develop a sense of patriotism.�
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