US Vice President Joe Biden has said that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was "closer to being a high-tech terrorist", and acknowledged the fact that the leak of classified US diplomatic cables have damaged foreign relations.

In an interview with the NBC's Meet the Press programme, when Biden was asked if what Assange had done was criminal, the vice president said it would be considered criminal if it could be established that the WikiLeaks founder had encouraged or helped Bradley Manning, the US intelligence analyst suspected of being behind the leak.