The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, said on Wednesday that the outgoing Spanish prime minister, José MarÃÂa Aznar, whose party was defeated in Sunday’s general election, had paid for backing the Iraq war and for blaming last week’s attacks on the armed Basque separatist group Eta.
His comments came after Spain was forced to explain to the UN why, within hours of the attacks and with no author identified, it pushed through the security council a motion blaming Eta.
”I think there is a lesson here for everybody, including the council members,” Annan said. ”We need international co-operation … to work together, share information, intelligence, work diplomatically and politically to contain terrorism,” he added in comments likely to please prime minister-elect José Luis RodrÃÂguez Zapatero, who wants control of foreign troops in Iraq handed to the UN.
Spain has written to security council members claiming that when the motion was passed the government ”was under the firm conviction that the terrorist group Eta was behind the terrible attacks”.
Zapatero on Wednesday reiterated his challenge to George Bush to hand control of Iraq to the UN or see Spanish troops withdrawn.
”I will listen to Mr Bush but my position is very clear and very firm,” he said. ”The occupation is a fiasco. Combating terrorism with bombs … with Tomahawk missiles isn’t the way to defeat terrorism. Terrorism is fought by the state of law. That’s what I think Europe and the international community have to debate.”
There were signs on Wednesday that, following his Spanish Socialist party’s victory on Sunday, Zapatero’s message on Iraq was getting through and the UN would have a larger role.
The Iraqi Governing Council finally dropped its opposition and invited a UN team to Baghdad to advise on an interim government and elections.
Washington also said it may seek a new UN resolution that could help persuade Zapatero not to withdraw Spain’s 1 300 troops. But a campaign against Zapatero and Spanish voters by Bush allies in Washington saw them labelled ”appeasers”.
Bush urged Spain and other allies in Iraq on Wednesday not to cave in to al-Qaeda pressure by withdrawing troops. ”It’s essential that we remain side-by-side with the Iraqi people,” he said.
Both the Aznar government’s attempts to turn attention away from the possibility of an al-Qaeda strike and its support for the Iraq war were among the reasons voters rejected them, Annan said.
A growing sense of unease over the behaviour of the Aznar government has begun to emerge, with German police accusing it of handing them false information on the bombings, according to reports.
Fractures, meanwhile have reportedly appeared in Aznar’s People’s party as he and his successor, Mariano Rajoy, were blamed for throwing away the election by mishandling the bombings.
Opinion was building that Rajoy should be replaced by Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, the younger and more liberal mayor of Madrid, according to the newspaper El Periódico.
With the Spanish system for creating a new government liable to last up to 40 days, Zapatero’s Socialist party is demanding that the outgoing government coordinate all policies during the transition period, including foreign policy.
First on the list was the sensitive subject of how to handle a troop rotation in Iraq next month.
”The changeover of troops must be consulted with us. The way of doing it, the conditions under which it is done, should be discussed and debated with the future government,” Jesús Caldera, the party’s official spokesman and a probable future minister told El PaÃÂs on Wednesday.
Caldera insisted that major decisions on foreign policy, where Zapatero has already pledged to ditch the Aznar government’s pro-Bush stance for an alliance with France and Germany, should be taken by the Socialists.
Zapatero pledged on Wednesday that Eta would remain a government priority.
He said he planned to bring Spain’s national police and Civil Guard under a single director-general to help remedy what he saw as Spain’s ”deficient security model”. – Guardian Unlimited Â