A NORWEGIAN newspaper has gotten hold of the entire file of US cables first leaked to WikiLeaks.

It contains more than 250,000 secret US embassy cables.

Norway's main business newspaper Dagens Naerings reported that Oslo-based Aftenposten became the only media organisation in the world to gain direct access to all the documents.

It allows them to dodge WikiLeaks' current strategy of drip-feeding the cables to preferred partners The New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel and El Pais.

WikiLeaks has so far chosen to publish fewer than two thousand of the 251,287 cables. But its tight control on the release of further documents has been undermined by the Norwegian leak.

Aftenposten news editor Ole Erik Almlid told Dagens Naerings: "We're free to do what we want with these documents … We're free to publish the documents or not publish the documents, we can publish on the internet or on paper. We are handling these documents just like all other journalistic material to which we have gained access."

Around 20 Aftenposten journalists are sifting through the file dump. The news articles are written in Norwegian, which may restrict their immediate impact in the English-speaking media world .. for a time at least.

Almlid said he had given little thought to the way the news of the second leak, and the resulting stories would be greeted by the US authorities.

Originally published as Newspaper gets WikiLeaks cables