foreign affairs
More than 1,300 Spanish troops are currently serving with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan
30.07.09 - 14:11 -
Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero said in an interview with The New York Times that is he willing to consider dispatching more troops to Afghanistan.
"We've always been willing to provide additional troops in order to support elections, as we are doing currently," Zapatero told The Times. "And if there is the need to sustain a greater number of presences in Afghanistan, we are willing to do so."
The newspaper suggested Zapatero's offer "seemed intended to address the Barack Obama administration's request for help in Afghanistan."
Until now, The Times said, "Spain's Socialist government has long resisted calls from the United States and other NATO allies to increase its Afghan force."
More than 1,300 Spanish troops are currently serving with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, including 450 sent to bolster security for the Aug. 20 general elections.
Zapatero told The Times that those extra troops could stay past the elections.
"I think they are working in an area where their contribution is positively acknowledged, and we will be willing to sustain our efforts in the future if so required," the prime minister said.
The daily said that the Spanish troop contingent in Afghanistan is about one-third the size of those of France or Germany in a total NATO force of 64,000.
"Zapatero was one of Europe's harshest critics of the Bush administration, and especially of the war in Iraq, although Spain has maintained a presence in Afghanistan since 2002," The Times noted.
Obama has focused his efforts on transferring the center of attention for U.S. forces from Iraq to Afghanistan, where Washington has been at war for almost eight years against the Taliban and Al Qaeda militants, the daily reported.
"Things have changed an awful lot," Zapatero said. "I think Obama is a person who listens. I think he's humble enough to understand, and humble enough to understand the diversity and complexity of the world, in terms of cultures, terms of ways of living, in terms of religions, in terms of different perspectives on a world order."
"It's not so much a question of what can Obama can do for us, but what we can do for Obama," the Spanish leader told The New York Times.
