Foreign Policy Under Zapatero

This is a wikileak detailing the foreign policy under Zapatero, written 4 days after the Madrid train bombings. It has many different goals and most of them are concerning Zapatero’s slow but important separation between Spain and the United States. For example, some of Spain’s foreign policy goals were to grow more within the European Union and strengthen those ties by helping with the new European constitution. He also wants to deal with Latin American and the United States as separately as he can. The most notable separation between the United States and Spain would be when Zapatero takes the troops out of Iraq. Zapatero promised he would do this by June 30^th but has been a bit vague saying that he would do this if there were some UN control in Iraq during this period of time. The government will definitely face some public pressure if the troops are not taken out after June 30^th since many people have blamed this terrorist attack upon this war and Spanish’s involvement in what is considered American politics. Another interesting point this article brings up is although Zapatero owes his victory to public outrage over the terrorist attacks, insiders had stated that before the attacks Zapatero’s presidency was set up to be very U.S friendly. So for the short term there may be a separation but long term goals may be different.

http://wikileaks.ch/cable/2004/03/04MADRID881.html