Dutch queen’s private phone number published

One of the 250,000 confidential diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks earlier this week includes the private phone numbers of Queen Beatrix and former prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende.

The whistleblower website Wikileaks initially said it would publish the cables in collaboration with five international newspapers, in a gradual and careful manner. However, the complete unredacted WikiLeaks file can now be downloaded from the internet.

The cable labelled 04THEHAGUE1017 from April 2004 lists the private and office phone numbers of important Dutch officials, including former defence minister Henk Kamp, former foreign minister Ben Bot and Queen Beatrix:

"NAME OF HEAD OF STATE: QUEEN BEATRIX TITLE: HER MAJESTY QUEEN BEATRIX, QUEEN OF THE NETHERLANDS, PRINCESS OF ORANGE-NASSAU, ETC., ETC.;"

At present, everybody can download the secret information that came into the possession of WikiLeaks, since an unidentified person has published the 250,000 US cables plus the accompanying password on BitTorrent.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte says he cannot rule out that Dutch officials have been put in danger by the Wikileaks revelations. The Dutch intelligence agency AIVD and the Public Prosecution Office are monitoring the situation.

(gsh/imm)