US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has denounced the release of classified and secret diplomatic cables in the website Wikileaks as an "attack on the international community" .

"This disclosure is not just an attack on America's foreign policy interests," Clinton stated."It is an attack on the international community: the alliances and partnerships, the conversations and negotiations that safeguard global security and advance economic prosperity."

"It puts people's lives in danger, threatens our national security and undermines our efforts to work with other countries to solve shared problems," she told reporters at the State Department.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared US is taking "aggressive steps" to hold those responsible for release of confidential documents.

More than 250 000 cables were obtained by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, founded by Julian Assange, and were given to major US media, which published them on Sunday, exposing inner workings of US diplomacy, including candid and embarrassing assessments of world leaders.

The messages were sent between 1966 and 2010 but most are from the last decade.