MANILA, Philippines - Government officials should now be wary of talking to officials of the US Embassy amid the leaking of confidential embassy cables by the online whistle-blower, WikiLeaks, Senator Joker  Arroyo said on Thursday.

The cables show US diplomats, including former US Ambassador to the Philippines Kristie Kenney, telling their government information they got from Philippine officials in various meetings, some of them informal.

"Philippine officials should be very wary about accepting invitations from the embassy," Arroyo told reporters. "They ask you about the situation in a very innocuous way. In fact, they're gathering evidence."

The moral lesson from this, he said, is that government officials should no longer accept invitations from embassy officials except to official functions.

Arroyo added that the government must refrain from reacting to whatever information comes out of WikiLeaks because they are all raw information. "They don't amount to anything until validated," he said.