Spain is set to pull out of Iraq

MADRID -- A day after Spanish voters threw out of office the government that led them into a hugely unpopular war in Iraq, the incoming prime minister yesterday vowed to bring Spanish troops home and harshly criticized the US led occupation as a "disaster."

Following his party's dramatic upset victory against the bloody backdrop of Thursday's train bombings, Socialist Party leader Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said he would fulfill a campaign promise to pull back Spain's 1,300 troops by the end of June.

"The war has been a disaster, the occupation continues to be a disaster. It has only caused violence," Zapatero said in his first interview after his triumph Sunday.

The war, Zapatero said, "divided more than it united; there were no reasons for it. Time has shown that the arguments for it lacked credibility and the occupation has been managed badly."

"Unless there is a change in which the occupiers give up control and the UN takes control of the situation, the Spanish troops will come back," he added. He set a deadline of June 30, the same date by which Washington vows to turn power over to an interim Iraqi government.

Zapatero also vowed to "get back in touch with Europe," saying he would lead the country back into the European diplomatic fold along with France and Germany, both of which adamantly opposed the war.

Evidence has mounted linking those allegedly behind the Madrid attack to Al Qaeda, including a videotaped claim of responsibility in the name of the terror network that said the attack was meant to punish Spain for its support of the Iraq war. The attack claimed 200 lives and wounded 1,500 people.

The train bombings altered the course of the election, political analysts said, and the political shockwaves from the terror attack altered the broader diplomatic landscape in Europe.

The defeat of the center-right Popular Party of outgoing Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar left the Bush administration without one of its staunchest allies in its war in Iraq. And it left three other key allies -- Britain, Italy, and Poland -- ever more exposed.

In London, Rome, Warsaw, and other European cities, officials stepped up security, especially around rail stations, to guard against further terror attacks.

In London, the fear seemed palpable during what was an otherwise normal commute yesterday.

On an outbound London commuter line at the end of the work day, 51-year-old Maurice Cook was waiting for his teenage children to return from school.

"When I dropped them off this morning, it did cross my mind," he said. "We must all be extremely vigilant."

British Transport Police have stationed plainclothes antiterror police throughout the London Underground. Posters have gone up advocating "if you suspect it, report it" -- a public awareness campaign that has not been seen in London since the worst days of the IRA bombing campaign at the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

While it was evident that the fear of terror has increased since the Madrid attack, it remained unclear how other Europeans would respond politically to that fear, or how they might respond to another attack. Britain's home secretary, David Blunkett, said, "I ask, fearful as people are, that they stand with us, because there is nothing more likely to erode our freedom and democracy than giving up and being compliant with people who are threatening the very livelihood we have built up in this country."

But in Spain and other European capitals that opposed the war, many voices insisted that Spain's decision to end what many viewed as a wrong and failed policy in Iraq does not suggest a retreat from the wider war on terror and certainly does not mean that Al Qaeda has scored a victory by altering the Spanish election.

Miguel Angel Moratinos, a former Spanish envoy to the Middle East for the European Union, disputed a suggestion by Prime Minister Leszek Miller of Poland, a strong supporter of the US-led war, that Spain's vow to pull back troops somehow suggested surrender to terrorism.

"It's not that Spain is going to surrender against terror. We're not going to surrender, but we want to be much more clever, more sophisticated, and more efficient in order to defeat them," Moratinos said in an interview with Reuters.

Zapatero had argued that the Iraq war undercut the war on terror and fractured the international coalition needed to fight terrorism, far from making the world a safer place, as Washington and London contended.

At the same time, Spain has been aggressive in pursuing the war on terrorism in Europe, and Zapatero said he remained committed to fighting against the Islamic militant movements that have tried to penetrate Spain from North Africa, just 7 miles away across the Strait of Gibraltar. Zapatero also has said he has no intention of removing Spanish troops from Afghanistan.

Even Socialist Party leaders acknowledged that Zapatero would not be the prime minister-elect if the bombings had not taken place. The blasts focused Spaniards' attention back on a war that was opposed by 90 percent of the population.

Before the bombings, Aznar's conservative party was considered the favorite in the election. Opinion polls indicated that Spanish voters had put the bitter debate over the war behind them and chose to focus on the future in a country with a surging economy, which Aznar helped to establish.

Then at 7:40 a.m. on Thursday, 10 bombs exploded in sequence in four packed commuter trains, and Spain was thrust into the most traumatic and bloody atrocity it has suffered since at least the civil war in the 1930s.

Before all the funerals were arranged or all the bodies identified, Aznar's government was blaming a Basque terrorist group, ETA, for the bombing. That turned out to be either a fateful miscalculation, or, as the political opposition alleged, an attempt to manipulate a national tragedy.

Three Moroccans were arrested, including one intelligence agencies in Spain and Morocco say is linked to the jailed leader of Al Qaeda in Spain. Then there was a videotaped message in which a man purporting to be the European military commander of Al Qaeda claimed responsibility.

Alberto El Dorado, 51, a newspaper vendor in Madrid, said he worries about what lies ahead. "It's hard to say what is going to happen to our country. We are all very nervous and very upset."

When the dead are buried and the politics of the tragedy are over, Dorado said, "We are still going to have to fight like hell against these bastards who did this to our country."

Globe correspondent Sarah Liebowitz contributed from London. Material from Reuters was used in this report.