The Hindu : U.S. scrambles to keep military coalition intact

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Mar 18, 2004

International

International

U.S. scrambles to keep military coalition intact

WASHINGTON/MADRID, MARCH 17. The White House was scrambling yesterday to keep its military coalition together after the Madrid bombings, with an offer to support a new U.N. mandate for keeping foreign troops in Iraq.

``It is essential that we remain side-by-side with the Iraqi people,'' the U.S. President, George Bush, said. ``Al-Qaeda understands the stakes. Al-Qaeda wants us out of Iraq because Al-Qaeda wants to use Iraq as an example of defeating freedom and democracy.''

His appeal for unity came after the incoming Spanish Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, pledged to pull his country's troops out of Iraq this summer if U.N. backing is not forthcoming. The Bush administration signalled that it was warming to the idea of a new resolution.

``We believe the United Nations has a vital role to play going forward,'' Scott McClellan, White House spokesman, said, adding that a new resolution ``is something that certainly would be looked at''. Even before the result of last weekend's Spanish elections, Britain had been canvassing diplomatic opinion for a new resolution to secure U.N. support for the transitional law due to come into force on June 30, when sovereignty is transferred from the Coalition Provisional Authority to a new Iraqi assembly.

``The prospect of a new U.N. resolution is something that we would strongly support and are working towards,'' said the Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, yesterday. ``I hope that we can engage the new Spanish Government in discussion about what kind of U.N. resolution they require.''

The Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, said Spain ``will be as committed as the whole European Union to ensuring as calm ... a transition from the Saddam years to a representative government as is possible and to accepting their continuing responsibilities.''

Previous U.N. resolutions have given a form of sanction to the presence of the troops, even though they have stated that such forces are not subject to U.N. military or political authority. Britain, the U.S. and the other coalition military forces have long said they will not quit the country after June 30, and would be seeking some form of renewed U.N. cover for the continued coalition presence.

Charges traded

Meanwhile, in Spain, politicians and journalists yesterday accused each other of using the blood of the 201 terrorism victims for their own political ends.

An outgoing People's Party Minister railed against what she claimed was cynical manipulation of the bombings by Opposition politicians and some left-leaning media.

The Education Minister, Pilar del Castillo, said accusations made before Sunday's vote that the Government was hiding the truth about the bombings in order to persuade voters that Basque group ETA was to blame — a scenario considered likely to win votes for the ruling party — were false.

There were also complaints that some news organisations had tried to manipulate news of the tragedy to help the Government.

The family of an ETA victim, Fernando Buesa, who died in 2000, complained that state television TVE and Telemadrid suddenly scheduled a documentary film about his death after the attacks and before the vote. ``We cannot accept that the memory of terrorism victims should be used in a sectarian fashion,'' a spokesman for the foundation named after him said.

A call was made to Telemadrid on Saturday night giving details of the location of a videotape in which an Al-Qaeda member appears to claim responsibility for the attacks.

However, journalists there said they found out about the tape only after a rival radio station broadcast news of it several hours later. —

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