U.K. government wants WikiLeaks media briefing: report

Britain's government, anticipating another WikiLeaks dump, has issued a notice to British news editors, saying it wants to be consulted before they publish the classified documents, according to the whistleblower's website.

On its Twitter page, WikiLeaks said the government has issued a DA-notice (Defence Advisory Notice), asking to be briefed by British media outlets that gainaccess to the sensitive files.

More than two million diplomatic cables, sent between Washington and its embassies and consulates around the world, could be released as early as this weekend.

U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have been trying to brief allies on what may be in the documents. The U.S. ambassador to Canada, David Jacobson, has phoned Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon to inform him of the matter.

This would be the third time such a large number of previously classified documents assembled by WikiLeaks has been made available to major media outlets. In July, it released 77,000 papers on the Afghan war. Then in October, it went public with 400,000 papers on Pentagon reports about the Iraq war.

This time WikiLeaks said the report will be on Afghanistan, Russia and other former Soviet republics, suggesting huge embarrassments, as well as classified U.S. discussions revealing corruption allegations against foreign government leaders. That's what has the U.S. worried.

Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, said Saturday that judging from his reading of the WikiLeaks material, only a small portion of the documents is covered by the British government's DA-notice.

In previous dumps, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has chosen the Guardian, the New York Times and Der Spiegel as the recipients.