Spain hands over control to US troops at Iraqi base

MADRID (AFP) May 16, 2004
Spanish forces in Iraq, due to withdraw from the country before the end of the month, on Sunday transferred operations at their base in the southern Iraqi city of Diwaniyah to US forces, the Spanish defence ministry said.

The Spanish general Jose Manuel Munoz, who will continue to manage the running of the base until the force's full departure, paid homage during a ceremony to Spanish troops killed while serving in Iraq.

He hailed the work of his troops and thanked local people as well as the coalition forces.

Spanish soldiers finished withdrawing from their other base in the Shiite Muslim holy city of Najaf on April 27.

The last Spanish combat troops left Iraq on April 28 and Defence Minister Jose Bono said this week that those in charge of shipping out military materiel might leave sooner than May 27, the scheduled date for officially handing over their bases to the US army.

The first announcement of the government of Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero after coming to power in April was that it would pull out the 1,430 Spanish soldiers serving in Iraq unless the United Nations took political and military control of the country by June 30.

That is the scheduled date for the US-led coalition to hand over power to an Iraqi administration.

Having concluded that such a UN role was not in the offing, Zapatero announced on April 18 that he had decided to pull out the Spanish contingent.

Spain sent the contingent under Zapatero's conservative predecessor Jose Maria Aznar, who backed US policy on Iraq against the majority opinion of Spaniards.

WAR.WIRE