A characteristic of the current Spanish government’s foreign policy has been a softly-softly approach to potentially explosive issues. Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez’s old nickname, ‘Bambi’, may now be out of date on the domestic front, but on the international stage, he still treads with the caution of a deer through the woods. Since angering George W. Bush by withdrawing Spanish troops from Iraq on taking office in 2004, Zapatero and his foreign minister, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, have often gone to great lengths not to upset their counterparts –in Morocco, Cuba and France, to mention just three examples– through their soft diplomacy. Lately, however, their tolerance has been … [Read more...] about Venezuela’s ETA haven tests limits of soft diplomacy
Arturo Cubillas
FARC, ETA and Al Qaeda: the terror connection
When the US Drug Enforcement Administration announced in December that it had arrested three suspected Al Qaeda operatives in Ghana and brought them to the United States to face drug-trafficking charges, investigators unveiled some astonishing allegations. The defendants had offered to help rebels of South America’s oldest active guerrilla front, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), traffic cocaine into Spain using North African routes. While there had been speculation regarding such a connection in the past, this was the first time US law enforcement authorities had linked the dots between Islamic extremists and the FARC in a criminal indictment. Then in early March, … [Read more...] about FARC, ETA and Al Qaeda: the terror connection