Pressure on US as Clinton faces flak at summit

It will get personal very quickly for Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State. While all of Washington scrambled yesterday to contain the fallout from the leak of secret diplomatic cables, she will have some face-to-face explaining to do when she arrives at a European security summit in Kazakhstan tomorrow.

Of the many very bad things about this latest round of disclosures of how America conducts foreign policy, one is the timing – at least, for Mrs Clinton. After the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe gathering, she travels to the Middle East, which was a focus of many of the leaked cables. Perhaps with that tour in mind, Mrs Clinton vehemently criticised the leaks last night and insisted that America's relationships would not be harmed.

"I am confident that the partnerships that the Obama administration has worked so hard to build will withstand this challenge," she said. "I want to make clear that our policy is not set in these messages but here in Washington." And, she added ominously, the US is "taking aggressive steps to hold responsible those to account".