Key points in the latest secret US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks: 43 MILITANT CAMPS IN PAKISTAN India has told the United States there were 43 militant camps in Pakistan, including 22 in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and that little had been done to permanently shut them down, the latest set of leaked US diplomatic cables showed.

The allegation was made by during a conversation in June last year between then US National Security Adviser General Jim Jones and Indian Defence Minister AK Antony, according to the cables released by WikiLeaks and published by Britain's Guardian newspaper.

Indian army chief General Deepak Kapoor, who attended the meeting, said that Pakistan had raided the camps following the Mumbai attacks in 2008 but some of them had since resumed operations.

Kapoor also told the US delegation that militants continued to infiltrate into Indian-administered Kashmir across the Line of Control and that it would not be possible without "some

kind of assistance, and or/degree of support that is institutional", the cable said.

VATICAN'S REFUSAL ON CHILD SEX ABUSE

The Vatican hit back yesterday after cables released by WikiLeaks indicated it had refused to cooperate with an Irish probe into child sex abuse by Catholic priests in Dublin.

The Vatican press office expressed scepticism at the reliability of the reports in a statement that referred to "the extreme seriousness of publishing such a large amount of secret and confidential material, and its possible consequences".

"Naturally these reports reflect the perceptions and opinions of the people who wrote them and cannot be considered as expressions of the Holy See itself, nor as exact quotations of the words of its officials," it said.

"Their reliability must, then, be evaluated carefully and with great prudence, bearing this circumstance in mind."

A cable from the US embassy in Rome, carried by The Guardian, had said requests for information by Ireland's Murphy Commission "of-

fended many in the Vatican... because they saw them as an affront to Vatican sovereignty".

The Murphy commission's findings, published in November 2009, caused shock across Ireland and the worldwide Catholic community by detailing how Church authorities covered up for paedophile priests in Dublin for three decades.

Dated February 26 this year, the cable quoted US diplomat in Rome Julieta Noyes as saying, "While Vatican contacts immediately expressed deep sympathy for the victims and insisted that the first priority was preventing a recurrence, they also were angered by how the situation played out politically".

Apart from the "affront to Vatican sovereignty", the cable said Vatican officials were annoyed that Dublin "did not step in to direct the Murphy Commission to follow standard procedures in communications with Vatican City.

CHINA FADE-UP ON MYANMAR China is fed up with the "foot-dragging" of the military junta in Myanmar on reform and fears the ruling generals can no longer protect

its interests in the country.

"The Chinese clearly are fed up with the foot-dragging by the Than Shwe regime," the top US diplomat in Yangon, Shari Villarosa, wrote in a January 2008 memo summarising a meeting with the Chinese ambassador at the time.

"The Chinese can no longer rely on the generals to protect their interests here, and recognise the need to broker some solution that keeps the peace," she wrote, following mass street rallies in 2007 that ended in bloody violence.

The cable added that after Chinese efforts to push for reform had ended "without much observable result", Beijing was willing to work with the United States to get the generals back to the negotiating table.

RUDD SCARED OF AFGHAN CONFLICT

Australia's former prime minister Kevin Rudd confessed that the bloody conflict in Afghanistan "scares the hell out of” him.

Rudd, currently foreign minister, was revealed to have confided his pessimism over the likely outcome of the conflict, in which 1,550 Australian troops are engaged.