April 1 (Bloomberg) -- Spain's Prime Minister-elect, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, kept U.S Secretary of State Colin Powell waiting last Thursday after the memorial service for the victims of Madrid's March 11 terrorist attack. A meeting with France's President Jacques Chirac had run overtime.

Zapatero, 43, says his priorities should be no surprise. He is sticking by a campaign pledge to pull Spain's 1,300 troops out of Iraq by June 30 absent United Nations control of the country. Such intelligence experts as former British Defense Secretary Lord King see that promise, if carried out, as a setback for the global war on terror.

``I think it created a very dangerous situation,'' said King, who was chairman of the parliament's intelligence committee from 1994 to 2001. ``The timing of the attack was so sensitive, coming immediately before a general election. There is strong evidence that it changed the election results, and it looks likely that the terrorists are set to achieve their objective, which is to get Spain to withdraw their troops.''

The Spanish government itself says Spain's determination to fight terrorism is stronger than ever. In his conversation with Powell, Zapatero pledged to continue Spain's commitment to the NATO force in Afghanistan, according to a briefing by a top State Department official on Powell's plane back to Washington.

Still, Zapatero has also made clear that Spain will no longer be the loyal U.S. ally that it was under Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, and that it is ready to side with France and Germany on key issues inside and outside the European Union.

Iraq and Terror

Experts such as Christopher Langton, head of defense information at the International Institute of Strategic Studies, note that U.S. commentators have blurred the line. There is the war on Iraq -- which the Spanish public has long opposed -- and the war on terrorism, which successive Spanish governments have had to face at home. Attacks by the Basque terror group ETA have killed more than 800 people in Spain over the last 30 years.

Still, Langton said in an interview from London, the perception of a link between the bombing and the election results could be seen as a victory by terrorist organizations.

``Does it give encouragement to the terrorists?'' asked Langton. ``The answer is yes, it does, undoubtedly and if the Spanish pull out of Iraq, that is something they can point to.''

The idea that the Spanish government is trying to appease terrorists arose first in the U.S. ``Here's a country who stood against terrorism and had a huge terrorist act within their country and they chose to change their government and to, in a sense, appease terrorists,'' said House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, on March 17.

UN Supervision?

The ``appeasement'' charge has now made its way around the globe.

``The fact that international terrorism is claiming credit for the sudden change of government in Spain is a very bad precedent,'' said Russian President Vladimir Putin, 51, in Sochi, Russia on Friday, according to Interfax. `This creates conditions under which international terrorism grows stronger.''

Soon after the Spanish election results were in, other members of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, including Poland, reaffirmed their commitments there. At the same time, opposition politicians in Italy and Australia have staked out positions similar to Zapatero's: calling for troop withdrawals unless a mandate is provided by the UN.

European Commission President Romano Prodi, who is also Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's leading political opponent, said in a letter published Monday that Italy should pull its forces out of Iraq if the UN does not take over supervision of the occupation force.

`Wrong Message'

If his party were in power, ``the choice would be to end the intervention,'' said Prodi, 63, in a letter to Corriere della Sera published Monday. Berlusconi, 67, has supported the U.S. policy in Iraq, and his commitment of 2,700 Italian police and soldiers has not changed even after the death of 19 Italians last November in a bomb blast in Nasiriyah.

In Australia, U.S. Ambassador Thomas Schieffer cautioned the leader of the opposition Labor Party not to send the terrorists ``the wrong message'' with promises to withdraw troops from Iraq. ``A precipitous withdrawal of troops could have very serious consequences,'' Schieffer said in an interview last week with the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

The surprise outcome in the March 14 Spanish elections was attributed by members of Aznar's Popular Party to the effect of the bombings, which the government first said were the work of ETA. The Popular Party also was hurt by opposition to the Iraq invasion, which 90 percent of Spaniards thought was a mistake according to polls taken last year.

Afghanistan

The dispatching of more Spanish troops to Afghanistan, recently confirmed by Foreign Minister designate Miguel Angel Moratinos, underscores Spain's commitment to the first phase of the U.S. war on terrorism, which began after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, with strikes against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

Moratinos emphasized the need for finding a solution in Iraq through the UN. Zapatero has said the Spanish troops would either withdraw on June 30 or remain there as part of an international force that would be officially requested by the new Iraqi government through the UN.

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the NATO secretary general, has also said NATO will not get involved in Iraq until its help is requested by the newly installed Iraqi government, most likely with the backing of a UN resolution. Powell, who has advocated a role for NATO in Iraq after June 30, told Zapatero discussions are underway on the future role for the UN, according to the senior administration official who briefed reporters after their meeting.

Spanish Arrests

In Washington last week, Richard Clarke, a former White House counter terrorism official who testified before the commission investigating the events of Sept. 11, accused the Bush administration of using the war on terror as a pretext for an invasion of Iraq, and of diverting resources needed to stabilize the fragile government in Afghanistan and continue the hunt for al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremists.

Spain -- like many other European countries -- has had a long history of fighting terrorism. Its investigation of the bombing attacks has moved fast: 23 people have been arrested, of whom five have been charged with murder in the 29 days since the attacks.

``In Spain, we've known the face of terrorism for more than 30 years,'' Zapatero told a Socialist party meeting in Madrid last week. ``No Spanish government has ever buckled to terrorism and no Spanish government ever will.''

European Cooperation

The bombings in Madrid have galvanized European leaders to do more to pool their efforts against the shadowy terrorist networks that have used Europe as a base and now, as a target.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw last week criticized the slow pace with which earlier cooperation plans, set after the Sept. 11 attacks, have been put into effect, notably a trans- national arrest warrant that has yet to be adopted by Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Greece.

``The problem for the European Union is that we can only got at the pace of the slowest,'' said Straw, 57.

With 15 members, about to expand to 25 on May 1, the EU anti- terrorist effort is handicapped by fragmentation and duplication, said Scott Atran, research director at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris and a researcher at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

``Security structure in Europe is much less integrated than business, transportation or scientific infrastructures,'' said Atran. ``In addition, most terrorist cells and support groups speak a single language, Arabic, while European investigators speak different languages.''

`The Same Germany'

Despite the continuing difference over the war in Iraq, European leaders meeting in Brussels last week vowed to stand united. ``Let us put aside a disagreement over the war in Iraq and unify to defeat terrorism,'' said British Prime Minister Tony Blair, 50, speaking in Madrid the day before the summit.

Powell, in a speech at the Kennan Institute in Washington on March 26, noted that Germany now heads one of NATO's reconstruction teams in Kabul. ``This is the same Germany, with the same German government that we differed with seriously about Iraq last year,'' said Powell. ``But here we have common cause.''

In that speech, Powell also said he had been ``anxious'' about the delay of his meeting with Zapatero because the crew on his plane back to the U.S. was running out of flight time.

Europeans, who have lived with a wide range of terrorist threats for decades -- from the Red Brigades in Italy to the Irish Republican Army in Britain to ETA in Spain -- are reluctant to call the struggle a ``war,'' said Marta Dassu, director of international policy issues at the Aspen institute in Rome.

No Victory

``There is now an equality of risk, after Madrid, and from this point of view, this could reduce the gap between the U.S. and Europe,'' Dassu said. ``You cannot coexist with this terrorism, the way we did with the Red Brigades.''

Europeans ``are hesitant to use the word 'war' because that implies that military force should be the dominant response,'' Dassu said. ``This is a long-term struggle, and not one you can solve with a single instrument.``

No government has yet been able to claim a victory over the terrorist groups that now operate across the globe, noted Christoph Bertram, director of the Science and Politics Foundation in Berlin.

``Where is the target?'' he asked. ``Just imagine if after 9/11, the Americans had not been able to take the war to Afghanistan. Fighting terrorism is a very complicated business. You have to reduce their chances of success by excellent police work, by reducing the crises that give them followers and by long- term strategy in the region where they come from.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Celestine Bohlen in Paris at cbohlen@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: April 1, 2004 00:39 EST