Rice raps Spain over ‘hasty’ Iraq pull-out

Spain’s decision to pull its troops out of Iraq in 2004 was made hastily and without giving its allies time to prepare for it, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said tonight.

Rice was interviewed by Spain’s state television TVE at the US Embassy in Madrid at the end of her six-hour trip to Spain.

Earlier she had met King Juan Carlos, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos.

Rice said that Iraq was and continues to be a very dangerous place, adding that US troops were facing danger at the time Zapatero withdrew the Spanish troops. She said the US should have been advised beforehand to prepare for such a move.

Zapatero pulled the troops out of Iraq a month after taking office in 2004. The war has been deeply unpopular in Spain, particularly after a terror attack by Islamic militants killed 191 people on Madrid commuter trains.

The militants said they targeted Spain because of its participation in the peacekeeping force in Iraq.

However, Rice acknowledged that the withdrawal happened a long time ago, and although she said both countries have had their differences, she highlighted that their relationship is warming.

Asked about Guantanamo Bay, Rice said the US government would like to close the prison camp in Cuba but for the moment there is no other place to keep the detainees, who she claimed are willing to kill again if released.

She said the US is the world’s biggest human rights defender and that the US fights to stop terrorists from committing attacks and innocent killing people as they have done in the United States and in Madrid.

Earlier, Rice claimed US forces fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan try to avoid civilian casualties but many times militants use people as human shields.

Responding to the recent criticism of civilian casualties in US and Afghan military operations, Rice insisted that militants try to hide among civilians.

"It is extremely important to get very clear who is, therefore, to blame for the fact that you have immersed in civilian populations," Rice said after talks with Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos.

"Let’s remember where the moral high ground rests. We are there to free them from the Taliban," Rice said.

Spain has some 700 peacekeepers in western Afghanistan, and its defence minister, Jose Antonio Alonso, complained about two military operations, including airstrikes, conducted in April by US and Afghan forces in the western part of the country.

The coalition said they killed more than 136 suspected Taliban but Afghan provincial officials reported that the offensive also killed 51 civilians, including women and children.