Bush works to shore up support for terror fight

By Ron Hutcheson
Knight Ridder Newspapers

	HUSSEIN MALLA / AP An Iraqi soldier, left, and a Spanish soldier confer on patrol yesterday in Diwaniyah, south of Baghdad, Iraq.
	E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Related stories Spain's new leader won't reconsider pledge to withdraw troops from Iraq Radical Islamic group threatens France

"It is important that the world society, international community, stands shoulder-to-shoulder and shows its solidarity to fight against these terrible attacks," Bush said after an Oval Office meeting with Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende.

"Terrorists will kill innocent life in order to try to get the world to cower," Bush said. "They'll kill innocent people to try to shake our will. That's what they want to do. And they'll never shake the will of the United States."

Balkenende, seated next to Bush, declined to say whether the 1,300 Dutch troops in Iraq would stay there after June 30, when the United States is scheduled to turn over political power to Iraqi authorities, while retaining U.S. troops there. At the same time, Honduran officials said yesterday they would pull their 370 troops out of Iraq during the summer, and diplomats speculated El Salvador and Guatemala could follow suit.

Bush's plea for international unity came five days after a series of carefully timed terrorist bombings in Madrid put new strains on the trans-Atlantic anti-terrorism alliance already shaken by last year's division over the Iraq war and European unease over Bush's propensity to act unilaterally.

Three days after the bombings, angry Spanish voters ousted the ruling party of Prime Minister José María Aznar, one of Bush's staunchest allies, and replaced him with José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, a Socialist who has pledged to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq if the United States remains in charge of security there.

Top 10 foreign troop contributors to Iraq Countries besides the U.S. that are assisting in postwar Iraq, and their troop contributions, as of March 15. United Kingdom 8,220 Italy 3,000 Poland 2,500 Ukraine 1,650 Netherlands 1,307 Spain 1,300 Australia 850 Romania 500 Denmark 500 Thailand 451 Remaining 25 countries 3,722 — The Associated Press

Most Spaniards opposed Aznar's stance, and many believed he made Spain a target for terrorists by his pro-U.S. policies.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld expressed regret at Zapatero's decision to pull Spanish troops from Iraq unless the U.N. takes control of peacekeeping.

"Obviously one would prefer that more countries would come in rather than a country leave," Rumsfeld told the British Broadcasting Corporation. Still, he predicted that "you'll find other countries reacting just the opposite" of Spain.

Although investigators are still trying to determine whether al-Qaida played any role in the Madrid attacks, signs increasingly point toward it or similar radical Muslim terrorists who might be loosely tied to the network. Europeans allied with the United States are wondering if they will be next.

The unease isn't limited to Europe.

In Australia, Prime Minister John Howard rebuked Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty for suggesting the country was at greater risk because of its cooperation with the United States. Many Australians are said to agree with Keelty.

Yet the U.S. administration acknowledged that its allies could pay a price. An FBI official visiting Sydney warned that Australia should brace for a terrorist attack because of its close ties to Washington.

"Any country that allies itself with the United States, unfortunately, is a target," John Pistole, the FBI's executive assistant director for counterterrorism, told Sydney's 2UE radio station.

On Oct. 12, 2002, al-Qaida-linked Islamic extremists bombed two bars on the vacation island of Bali. Eighty-eight of the 202 people killed were Australian tourists.

Meanwhile, the number of dead in the Madrid terror attacks rose to 201 yesterday with the death of a 45-year-old woman.

Eight people remain in critical condition in the Madrid attacks. More than 1,600 were injured.

	CHRISTOPHE SIMON / AFP/GETTY IMAGES People hold portraits of some of last week's bombing victims during a demonstration yesterday in Alcalá de Henares, Spain. At least 30 people from Alcalá de Henares died in the Madrid train blasts.

In Spain, police were hunting five more Moroccan Muslim militants suspected of helping plant the bombs.

One of the three other Moroccan men in custody, Jamal Zougam, 30, was identified by survivors of the train attacks, and investigators said they believed the men might have carried the bombs aboard the trains in backpacks and sports bags, officials said.

Zougam, 30, was an associate of a Moroccan fugitive, Amer Azizi, who was charged last fall with belonging to a Madrid al-Qaida cell that played a support role in the Sept. 11 attacks, a senior Spanish investigator said.

Azizi evaded capture in 2001 by fleeing to Iran, according to court documents.

Spanish police say intercepted communications last year revealed that Azizi "was in Iran with Abu Musab Zarqawi," whom U.S. officials have accused of masterminding bombings in Iraq.

Zarqawi's network also has been implicated in the planning of last May's suicide attacks that killed 45 people in Casablanca, according to Spanish court documents. Investigators say the Zarqawi network appears to have become a new umbrella for Islamic extremist groups in Europe and the Mideast that have been splintered by a worldwide crackdown since September 2001.

Zougam has been linked by Spain's top anti-terrorist judge, Baltasar Garzon, to another man, Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, the alleged leader of the Spanish al-Qaida cell who is being held in Spain on suspicion that he helped plan the Sept. 11 attacks.

Security experts in North Africa say the region is full of radical Islamic militants and people who fought in wars in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya.

There is another apparent thread connecting the Sept. 11 case, the Casablanca attacks and the Madrid train bombings: Moroccan imam Mohamed Fizazi, who is serving a 30-year sentence in Morocco.

Fizazi served as the spiritual leader of the Casablanca attackers. In recent years, the imam divided his time between Tangier, Morocco, and Hamburg, Germany, where he preached at a mosque attended by Sept. 11 plotters, according to Italian court documents.

Zougam, a native of Tangier, was a follower of Fizazi, according to Spanish court documents. Zougam moved back and forth from Madrid to Morocco.

Information on the investigation comes from The Associated Press, Reuters and the Los Angeles Times

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