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| Security Council: It was ETA. |
| 2004-03-12 |
| Hat tip LGF. THE UN Security Council has voted unanimously to immediately blame Basque militants ETA for the Spanish train bombings. The vote was made before evidence emerged pointing to al-Qaeda. Ooops
The 15-nation council, on which Spain holds a non-permanent seat, passed a resolution naming ETA as the perpetrator of the attack after diplomats said they accepted the accusation put forward by Madrid. But previous resolutions have stopped short of naming a specific individual or group, and several UN officials privately expressed surprise at the decision to finger ETA for the bombings, which came ahead of weekend elections in Spain. The country was a firm US ally in the war on Iraq and suspicion mounted later that Islamic militants may have carried out the bombings that left more than 190 dead and 1400 wounded in the Spanish capital. French UN ambassador Jean-Marc de la Sabliere and his US counterpart John Negroponte said the council had accepted Spain’s decision to blame ETA, although diplomats said other nations expressed some reservations. Negroponte shrugged off suggestions that al-Qaeda or Muslim militants angry over the war might have had a hand in the attacks, saying he had no reason to contradict close war ally Spain. "We are satisfied by the fact that the Security Council acted with such promptness to condemn unanimously this terrible terrorist attack," he said. He said Madrid had claimed that there had been other threats made by the militant separatist group in the run-up to the elections. "It is the judgment of the government of Spain that these attacks were carried out by the ETA, and we have no information to the contrary," Negroponte said. Within hours, however, a letter delivered to an Arabic newspaper and attributed to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the simultaneous blasts on busy rush hour trains in Madrid. "It was us! Allahu Ackbar!!!!!!" Meanwhile Spain announced that police had found an audiotape with Koranic verses in Arabic along with several bomb detonators in a van suspected of being linked to the bombings. Diplomats on the Security Council, which was bitterly split over the Iraq war, have repeatedly stressed the need to put those divisions behind them and put forward a united front amid the drive to rebuild Iraq. "We have to give a powerful signal," Chile’s UN ambassador Heraldo Munoz said. He appealed for "unity and clear condemnation" from his council colleagues before the vote. Munoz heads a key council committee responsible which oversees sanctions against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, which was created in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. But officials noted that a Security Council resolution passed the day after those attacks did not mention al-Qaeda, and that similar resolutions condemning attacks in Bali and Moscow also refrained from naming a specific perpetrator. "You get the feeling they just jumped the gun on this," one UN official said. In the letter sent to the Al-Quds al-Arabi paper based in London, a group calling itself the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades/Al-Qaeda said it had carried out the Madrid bombings and an attack in Istanbul two days earlier. The statement, a copy of which was sent to AFP by the paper, said its "death squad" had carried out the attacks, "part of the settling of old scores with crusader Spain, America’s ally in its war against Islam". Spain’s Interior Minister Angel Acebes said the focus of the investigation would remain on the Basque group, adding: "We must be very cautious and investigate other leads." At the United Nations, where Spain heads the Security Council’s counter-terrorism committee - also formed after September 11 - deputy ambassador Ana Maria Menendez said her government was "comforted" by the resolution. |
| Posted by:Steve from Relto |