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03/24/2004 Archived Entry: "Jose Maria Aznar discusses election, 3/11"

Posted by steve @ 03:14 PM EST [Link]

DEFENDING YOURSELF: Outgoing Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar discusses in the Wall Street Journal today the March 11 terrorist attacks and defends his government's initial belief that ETA had carried them out.

ETA has committed more than 800 murders, among other crimes, over three decades, and has sought always to weaken and divide our democracy, which has just celebrated its 25th anniversary. A few days earlier, the group had tried to carry out an attack with 500 kilograms of explosives, one that failed only due to the intervention of the Guardia Civil, the national police. Those detained in this failed attack had a map that highlighted the zone of the Henares Pathway, through which run the trains that were targeted on March 11. And it was ETA that, on Christmas Eve, attempted another slaughter at Madrid's Chamartin station, also thwarted by our National Police. And to continue the ghoulish catalog, the same terrorist group brought two vans loaded with more than 1 1/2 tons of explosives to Madrid in December 1999. Once again, our security forces foiled what would have been mass murder.

My government was not alone in attributing the March 11 attacks to ETA. In the first few hours, the president of the Basque Autonomous Region, the secretary general of the Socialist Party, the general coordinator of the United Left and the secretary general of Catalonia's Esquerra Republicana, among others, did likewise.

To his credit, Aznar doesn't whine about the election that resulted in a Socialist victory.

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