Spain to send more troops to Afghanistan

By DANIEL WOOLLS
Associated Press Writer

Spain's government agreed Friday to send 220 more troops to Afghanistan, raising the total to about 1,000 and moving to help a hard-pressed allied coalition fighting the resurgent Taliban.

The decision now goes to parliament, which is expected to approve it.

Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega said Spain wants to further contribute to the NATO-led mission to bring peace to Afghanistan. The U.S. has been urging its allies to send more soldiers.

Spain has had troops in Afghanistan since 2002. There are now about 1,200 Spanish soldiers in the west of the country, but 450 of them were sent to provide security for last month's presidential election and are due to come home when the results are known.

The government, eager for strong ties with President Barack Obama, had been hinting for months it might send more troops for the long-term. But the idea seemed to take on more urgency last week with a series of attacks on Spanish troops, including an ambush that prompted a five-hour firefight in which Spanish forces killed 13 insurgents while they had no casualties of their own.

Fernandez de la Vega said the new troops are tasked in part with providing more security for the ones already there, many of whom are involved in reconstruction efforts. She said they are going at a particularly important time because the presidential elections will be followed next year by legislative and local ones.

"In line with its international commitment, Spain is contributing to the reinforcement of the peacekeeping mission, which as you NATO is carrying out with a mandate from the United Nations," she said.

That remark shows how sensitive foreign troop deployments are in this country.

Right after taking office in 2004, the Socialist government brought home peacekeepers that the previous, conservative, pro-U.S. government had sent to Iraq. It argued that their continued presence would endorse what the government considered an illegal invasion. It later enacted a law under which all overseas troop deployments must be approved by parliament.

Now the government always takes pains to stress the Afghanistan mission is a legitimate one with an international mandate. Spain first sent soldiers when the conservative Popular Party was in power. But the Socialists have continued it.

The Popular Party is expected to go along with the new deployment, albeit begrudgingly.

Stung by Socialist criticism of Spain's involvement in Iraq under the conservatives, the Popular Party is always pressing Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to acknowledge that the Spanish troops in Afghanistan are in the middle of a war, not keeping the peace.

A total of 87 Spaniards have died in connection with the Afghanistan mission, most of them in a plane crash in Turkey in May 2003 while returning home and in a helicopter crash in August 2005.