Spain’s new Prime Minister, the Socialist José Luis RodrÃÂguez Zapatero, on Monday 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-Qaeda 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-Qaeda 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-Qaeda’s name.
The US acknowledged on Monday that the Madrid attack had been carried out with the aid of Bin Laden’s group.
”I’m satisfied there are connections to al-Qaeda. The depth of that connection and the total level of responsibility has not yet been determined,” said the homeland security undersecretary, Asa Hutchinson.
Zapatero said his victory was a direct consequence of support by the outgoing prime minister, José MarÃÂa Aznar, for a ”disastrous” war in Iraq.
A bitter row continued over whether 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 — a scenario thought likely to boost support for the People’s party.
The once pro-Aznar El Mundo newspaper criticised the outgoing government for playing down evidence of al-Qaeda’s role in the bombings.
Bush called Zapatero to congratulate him in an attempt to calm the waters 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 spokesperson said.
Blair also had ”friendly” telephone talks with him, according to his spokesperson. – Guardian Unlimited Â