France says it is improving its cybersecurity in wake of WikiLeaks scandal

The French foreign ministry says it is improving its cybersecurity in order to avoid the scandal that has rocked Washington after confidential US diplomatic cables were leaked to the WikiLeaks website and published.

AFP / Boris Horvat

"In order to preserve documents' confidentiality, we are in a permanent process of improving security," said France's foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero.

France will continue to work in the same way diplomatically, said Francois Nicoullaud, Paris's ambassador to Tehran from 2001 to 2005. "The Americans work like us. It's normal for a diplomat to describe a foreign head of state as they see them, with their family environment, their faults and what could influence them," he said.

France is hoping to avoid the public airing of its own cables. The US diplomatic cables also painted an unflattering portrait of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, with one calling him "thin-skinned and authoritarian."

According to the leaked WikiLeaks cables, French President Nicolas Sarkozy called Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during negotiations with Moscow after the 2008 Georgia conflict.

"Sarkozy caught the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov by the lapel of his jacket and called him a liar," an American diplomat reported in a memo.