The UK newspaper “The Guardian” has turned down Wikileaks’ accusation that it is responsible for the leak of hundreds of thousands of secret US diplomatic cables.

In a statement, the Guardian said that it “utterly rejects any suggestion that it is responsible for the release of the unedited cables.”

Earlier, the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks admitted that it had lost control of a cache of US diplomatic cables that it had been publishing since last year.

WikiLeaks admittance followed after as many as 100,000 secret US cables were leaked online.

WikiLeaks is now blaming the Guardian newspaper for the leak, claiming that it published the password that unlocks an encrypted database of unredacted the secret cables.

The non-profit, secret-leaking organization says that a book by the Guardian journalist David Leigh published the password in his book, making it accessible to anyone who wants to access the classified US diplomatic cables.

It may be noted here that the Guardian newspaper was last year WikiLeaks’ partner in publishing some of the US cables.