Leading Spanish socialists this afternoon strongly rejected US charges that the country is appeasing terrorists by planning to pull troops out of Iraq in the wake of the Madrid bombings.
Spain's planned withdrawal is "not a result of improvisation and even less a consequence" of the March 11th attack that killed 201 people, said Mr Jesus Caldera, a former Socialist parliamentary spokesman.
A Spanish withdrawal could help tip the balance toward "full respect for international law" and lead to the United Nations taking control in Iraq, added Mr Caldera, who is expected to get a post in Prime Minister-elect Mr Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's government.
Mr Zapatero campaigned on pledges to pull Spain's 1,300 troops out by June 30th unless the United Nations takes charge in Iraq. He has repeated that pledge since his election, calling the occupation a "fiasco" and the US-led war a disaster.
Iraqi sovereignty should be restored, and "that is done by beginning to take away allies of the US intervention," said Mr Gaspar Llamazares, leader of Spain's United Left party, today.
Senior US politicians have assailed Mr Zapatero's break with the policies of outgoing Prime Minister Mr Jose Maria Aznar, a backer of the US-led war who dispatched troops to Iraq despite huge popular opposition in Spain.
"Here's a country who stood against terrorism and had a huge terrorist act within their country, and they chose to change their government and to, in a sense, appease terrorists," House Speaker Mr Dennis Hastert, the top Republican in the US Congress, said yesterday.
Republican Henry Hyde, chairman of the House International Relations Committee, said: "The vote in Spain was a great victory for al-Qaeda" - the terror group purportedly responsible for the bombings of rush-hour trains.
Democratic presidential candidate Mr John Kerry also said Mr Zapatero "should not have said he was going to pull out of Iraq".