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Terror Strike in U.S. Before Vote Is a Big Concern, Rice Says
By BRIAN KNOWLTON,
International Herald Tribune
Published: April 18, 2004
WASHINGTON, April 18 — The Bush administration said today that it was taking seriously the possibility of a major terror strike in the United States in late autumn aimed at influencing the November elections.
Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, said the administration was preparing for such an attack. "We are actively looking at that possibility, actively trying to make certain that we are responding appropriately," she said on Fox News Sunday.
José María Aznar, the former Spanish prime minister, issued a similar warning. He said in an interview aired today that terrorists might seek to affect the American presidential election on Nov. 2. Mr. Aznar's party suffered an unexpected defeat days after the March 11 bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people.
Mr. Aznar said that a pre-election attack in the United States was "possible, very possible," adding that the terrorists "will be as harmful as they can possibly be, if they can do it."
Mr. Aznar's party, which supported the Iraq war, saw its lead in opinion polls evaporate after the bombings. The new prime minister, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, said again today that he would withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq "as soon as possible."
Ms. Rice said that the White House had to "take very seriously" the possibility that terrorists had taken "the wrong lesson from Spain."
"I think we also have to take seriously that they might try during the cycle leading up to the election to do something," she said. "In some ways, it seems like it would be too good to pass up for them."
"Of course, we are concerned about the election cycle."
It was not clear whether the Spanish warning, and the American reaction, were based entirely on the logic that terrorists would want to replicate what for them seemed a signal success in Spain, or whether any separate intelligence data pointed in that direction.
Regardless, said Ms. Rice, the possibility could not be ignored. Her comments constituted a first high-level confirmation that the Bush administration was not only taking the threat seriously but making specific plans to avert an attack.
Mr. Aznar, who supported the Iraq war in the face of powerful public opposition, said that before stepping down as prime minister he had strongly warned Mr. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that terrorists might target the American and British political processes. Britain is expected to hold elections next year.
"I told George Bush and Tony Blair and other political leaders to be extremely careful before elections," Mr. Aznar told Fox News. He said, in remarks translated from Spanish by the network, that it is "possible, very possible" that terrorists will try to affect the American presidential election.
Ms. Rice indicated today that she expected the new Socialist government in Spain to follow through on the vow to remove Spanish troops from Iraq.
But Mr. Aznar warned that a Spanish withdrawal would simply confirm in terrorists' minds that they could bend the will of a democracy through violence. "It will be a very bad message," he said. "It would be a message of having managed to achieve their objectives. The only message that terrorists need to get is that they're going to be beaten."
The Spanish electorate, in rejecting Mr. Aznar's party, appeared angered by its handling of the Madrid bombing investigation, and particularly by its early assertion that the Basque separatist group, ETA, was responsible. The government later changed its position, blaming North African extremists who might have attempted to work with Al Qaeda.
Mr. Aznar today attributed the attacks to a "group of Moroccan cells" which "could have relations with Al Qaeda."
But planning for the attack, he also said, appeared to have begun in November 2002, well before the war in Iraq. The war, he conjectured, may have been "just a pretext" for terrorists whose fundamental objective was to reclaim Muslim control of Spain.
The Aznar interview was taped around the time late last week that a voice believed to be that of Osama bin Laden offered European countries a "truce" if they pulled their troops out of Arab lands.
Ms. Rice, meanwhile, said again that the White House had not backed away from plans to return sovereignty to the Iraqi people on June 30. But that, she added, "does not mean by any stretch of the imagination that we abandon them in terms of the security presence."
She praised the work of Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations envoy who has been examining ways to establish an effective interim government by that date, ahead of elections in December or January. She said that Mr. Brahimi was doing "a terrific job."
Ms. Rice cautioned, however, that a broadened United Nations role along would not solve every problem in Iraq.
But Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the presumptive Democratic candidate for president, insisted that, if elected, he would move immediately to broaden foreign involvement in Iraq.
The administration's approach so far, he said, had "proved, frankly, stunningly ineffective."
"Our diplomacy has been about as arrogant and ineffective as I've ever seen," Mr. Kerry said on the NBC News program "Meet the Press." "Never has the United States of America been held in as low regard internationally as we are today. We are not trusted and this administration is not loved."
Mr. Kerry, who voted to authorize the Iraq war, was pressed by an interviewer to say what he would do differently than the Bush administration to persuade other countries to join the American-led effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq.
"It may well be we need a new president, a breath of fresh air to reestablish credibility with the rest of the world," he said.
But Mr. Kerry also said that in the near term, more American troops would be needed to bring order in Iraq, working, if necessary, with a United Nations mission.
The candidate said that eventually a NATO security force under an American commander could transform the military force in Iraq.