[A-List] Spain: the international response

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

We must nail this lie now and for as long as it takes -- Zapatero does not
in the least owe his position to al-Qaeda, a crude piece of delegitimising
rhetoric that would have us believe that the liars who got found out on
Sunday should be back in power. Of course the subtext to this is that if the
lie does not work now, it never will. And Blair will be next. Meanwhile to
Jonathan Eyal, we might ask, wouldn't Bush's election victory this year
similarly be a debt owed to bin Laden?

-----

Spanish leader accuses Bush and Blair

Threat to pull troops out of Iraq as row over election result escalates

Giles Tremlett in Madrid
Tuesday March 16, 2004
The Guardian

Spain's new prime minister, the Socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero,
yesterday followed his dramatic election triumph with a pledge to bring
troops home from Iraq and accusations that Tony Blair and George Bush lied
about the war.

"Mr Blair and Mr Bush must do some reflection _ you can't organise a war
with lies," he said in his first radio interview after ousting the ruling
conservative People's party in a Sunday election dominated by the terror
attacks on trains that killed 200 Madrid commuters last week.

"The Spanish troops will come back," he added.

His stinging comments caused political shockwaves across Europe and in the
US. Sunday would go down in history as "the day when Islamist fundamentalism
was seen as dictating the outcome of a European election", said Wilfried
Martens, the head of the European People's party, an umbrella group for
European conservative parties.

Jonathan Eyal, the director of studies at the London-based Royal United
Services Institute, said if al-Qaida were responsible for last week's bombs,
Spain had become the first country "to have a prime minister owing his
position to Bin Laden".

As people across Europe paid three minutes' silent homage to the victims of
the Madrid attacks, the EU called an emergency conference of interior
ministers for Friday to discuss the implications of the train bombings.

Spanish police concentrated their investigation on three Moroccan men
arrested on Saturday. One was reportedly identified by a survivor who saw
him on one of the trains.

It was also revealed that the same man, Jamal Zougam, was known for his
contacts with radical Islamists and al-Qaida suspects by police and
intelligence services in France, Spain and Morocco. Spanish police searched
his Madrid apartment in October 2001, finding videotapes of jihad fighters
and an interview with Osama bin Laden.

Speculation grew of a direct link between the Madrid attacks and the group
that killed 44 people in suicide bombings in Casablanca in May as Spanish
investigators travelled to Morocco.

There was no sign, however, that intelligence agencies were any closer to
identifying a man with a Moroccan accent who, in a videotape found in Madrid
on Saturday, had claimed responsibility for the attack in al-Qaida's name.

The US acknowledged yesterday that the Madrid attack had been carried out
with the aid of Bin Laden's group.

"I'm satisfied there are connections to al-Qaida. The depth of that
connection and the total level of responsibility has not yet been
determined," said the homeland security undersecretary, Asa Hutchinson.

Mr Zapatero said his victory was a direct consequence of support by the
outgoing prime minister, José María Aznar, for a "disastrous" war in Iraq.

A bitter row continued over whether Mr Aznar's government had tried to fool
voters into thinking that the Basque separatist group Eta was to blame for
the attacks, an allegation that has drawn indignant denials from his party.

Workers at the state news agency EFE demanded that news executives be sacked
for allegedly manipulating reporting of the attacks to make it seem the
Basque terrorist group was to blame.

The once pro-Aznar El Mundo newspaper criticised the outgoing government for
playing down evidence of al-Qaida's role in the bombings.

Mr Bush called Mr Zapatero to congratulate him in an attempt to calm the wat
ers as the Socialist claimed Sunday's electoral turnaround would have
repercussions in the November US presidential elections.

"The two leaders said they both looked forward to working together,
particularly on our shared commitment to fighting terrorism," a White House
spokesman said.
Mr Blair also had "friendly" telephone talks with him, according to his
spokesman.