WikiLeaks cables gallery: Washington's view of world leaders

In late 2008 the Moscow embassy wired back about the relationship between Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev and the prime minister, Vladimir Putin, remarking that Medvedev, officially the senior partner, "plays Robin to Putin's Batman" Photograph: RIA NOVOSTI/Reuters

Kim Jong-il, the ailing dictator of North Korea fared no better, with diplomats quoting sources who described him variously as a "flabby old chap" and someone who had suffered "physical and psychological trauma" as a result of his stroke Photograph: KCNA Handout/EPA

The Paris embassy remarked on the "thin-skinned and authoritarian personal style" of French President Nicholas Sarkozy after it reported his tendency to repeatedly rebuke his team and the French prime minister Photograph: Lucas Jackson/Reuters

Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was "feckless, vain, and ineffective as a modern European leader", according to Elizabeth Dibble, US charge d'affaires in Rome. Another report from Rome recorded the view that he was a "physically and politically weak" leader whose "frequent late nights and penchant for partying hard mean he does not get sufficient rest" Photograph: AGF s.r.l./Rex Features

Key allies in the war on terror are not spared either. A dispatch from Kabul reports the view that the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, is "an extremely weak man who did not listen to facts but was instead easily swayed by anyone who came to report even the most bizarre stories or plots against him" Photograph: Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Images

In Yemen, the power base of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, President Ali Abdullah Saleh was "dismissive, bored and impatient", during a meeting with John Brennan, Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser Photograph: Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty Images

Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, is simply branded "the crazy old man" by Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, South Africa's international relations and cooperation minister, according to a cable from Pretoria Photograph: Alessandro Di Meo/AFP/Getty Images

Meanwhile Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, is "just strange" according to an adviser to Sultan Qaboos of Oman
Photograph: Konstantin Chernichkin/Reuters

Israel's prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu is "elegant and charming" but never keeps his promises, according to a cable from Cairo recounting a meeting with President Hosni Mubarak, who added: "I have told him so personally" Photograph: Ronen Zvulun/AP