World - Reuters
Spain's Leader Criticizes Israeli Threat to Arafat
Date: Sat, Apr 24, 2004
CASABLANCA, Morocco (Reuters) - Spain's new prime minister on Saturday criticized Israeli threats against Yasser Arafat (news - web sites) and pledged to work intensely for Middle East peace.
"I don't think certain threats, that undoubtedly contribute to intensifying the climate of tension...are the right way," Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero told a news conference during a visit to Morocco.
He was responding to a question about threats by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) against the Palestinian president.
Sharon said on Israeli television this week he was no longer bound by a pledge not to harm Arafat.
"The Spanish government will work intensely with all those countries...that also want a new stage to start urgently in the situation between Israel and Palestine," Zapatero said.
Miguel Angel Moratinos, foreign minister in Zapatero's Socialist government that has been in power for a week, said on Thursday that the United States had asked him to help promote Middle East peace. Moratinos was for seven years the European Union (news - web sites)'s special envoy to the Middle East.
Before the Iraq (news - web sites) war began last year, some had argued that it would drive forward Middle East peace efforts, but the situation had not improved, said Zapatero, an opponent of the U.S.-led war who has announced he will pull Spain's 1,400 troops out of Iraq.
A deepening Israeli-Palestinian conflict would have a negative effect on "many of the problems of security, peace, and understanding" in important regions of the world, he added.
Zapatero's Socialists surprisingly won a general election held three days after the March 11 Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people and have been blamed on Islamic militants linked to al Qaeda.
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