- WASHINGTON -- Washington
gave a thinly-veiled warning to Spain and other European countries yesterday
that to waver in the fight against global terrorism would lead to catastrophe.
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- With anxiety growing that Spain's victorious Socialists
might deal a wounding blow to America's coalition by withdrawing Spanish
troops from Iraq, the White House launched a co-ordinated offensive clearly
tailored to pre-empt calls for a new approach to the fight against terrorism.
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- Hailing the staunch support of Jose Maria Aznar, Spain's
prime minister, Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, said he hoped
that other leaders would not "shrink from our responsibility, collective
responsibility, to go after terrorists wherever they surface".
-
- His words appeared to be aimed at Spain's Socialists
who have called for the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq and also
other European leaders who are sceptical of America's approach to the fight
against terrorism.
-
- Mr Powell said the lesson of the Madrid attacks was that
no one was immune to terror. Pointedly, he cited Germany and France, two
of the leading international critics of America's foreign policy since
the September 11 attacks.
-
- "I think what this (the Madrid bombs) illustrates
is that there is a war on terror that must be fought. Nobody's immune...",
Mr Powell told Fox News.
-
- "And so rather than finding fault with what Spain
has done by being aggressive in the war on terror, this should redouble
everyone's efforts to go after terrorist organisations of any kind, whether
it's Eta, whether it is al-Qa'eda or any other terrorist organisation.
Terror has to be brought to an end."
-
- After the bombs in Madrid, and ahead of Friday's anniversary
of the start of the war on Iraq, Mr Bush's administration is on the defensive
on two fronts and it came out fighting yesterday.
-
- Mr Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, and
Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, toured Washington's influential
morning talk shows to prop up the domestic and international support for
Mr Bush's foreign policy.
-
- The strongest language came from Miss Rice who said that
to back down from the fight against terrorism after the Madrid bombs would
be to play into the hands of groups such as al-Qa'eda.
-
- She told NBC's Meet the Press that the September 11 attacks
had underlined the folly of a "if we don't bother them they won't
bother us" approach.
-
- The world should never fall for "the notion that
we would be better off just to sit back and let them [terrorists] grow
and continue", she added.
-
- She also dismissed the idea that the confrontational
policies of America and its allies since the attacks on New York and Washington
had stirred up a "beehive of terrorists", saying that for too
long they had been emboldened by the West's lack of response. "We
have no choice but to take them on wherever they may be," she said.
-
- Asked about the claim by an al-Qa'eda spokesman that
the Madrid bombs were a result of Spain's support for America in the war
in Iraq, Ms Rice said Spaniards voting in yesterday's election would not
be intimidated. They understood that they had had "strong and good"
leadership from their prime minister.
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- Mr Powell set out yesterday on a tour of South Asia,
where he is expected to discuss the progress of the hunt for Osama bin
Laden, the head of al-Qa'eda, with the leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
-
- Yesterday's interviews launched a week of sustained debate
over the merits of the war in Iraq, and the progress of the war against
terrorism, which the administration's critics suggest may have been hampered
and not helped by the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
-
- Washington justified the war, arguing that Iraq posed
a threat with its weapons of mass destruction. With no evidence of banned
weaponry emerging since the downfall of Saddam, Washington is now bolstering
its defence with talk of his grisly human rights record, and also the "potential"
danger he posed.
-
- The White House is today flying journalists to Tennessee
to view the evidence of Libya's weapons of mass destruction programmes,
the dismantling of which Washington cites as one of the fruits of its toppling
of Saddam.
-
- Miss Rice said the overthrow of Saddam had "greatly
served" the fight against terrorism.
-
- "I believe to this day that it [Iraq] was an urgent
threat," she said. "This could not go on and we are safer as
a result because today Iraq is no longer a state of weapons of mass destruction
concern."
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- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.
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- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/03/15/wspan
15.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/03/15/ixnewstop.html
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