Madrid, 28 June (AKI) - Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero was set to meet his Lebanese counterpart Fouad Siniora on Thursday amid growing divisions in Spain over the country's contribution to a UN peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon. The previously unscheduled visit by Siniora to Madrid was arranged in the wake of last Sunday's killing of six Spanish soldiers in a car bomb blast near the southern Lebanese town of Khiyam - the first deadly attack on the 13,000-strong UNIFIL force since its deployment following last year's Israel-Hezbollah war.
Spanish newspapers on Thursday focused on the bitter contrasts between Zapatero and the leader of the main opposition conservative Popular Party, Mariano Rajoy, who has accused the government of failing to ensure that the 1,100 Spanish soldiers serving in Lebanon receive adequate safety equipment. In particular the absence of frequency inhibitors - which block explosions set off by remote control - on the vehicles carrying the soldiers who died in Sunday's attack.
Zapatero has responded by saying that Spanish troops were also not equipped with such mechanisms when his predecessor Jose Maria Anznar of the Popular Party was in power. Aznar had despatched Spanish troops to Iraq as part of the US-led multinational force, a decision reversed by Zapatero when he came to power 2004.
According to Madrid-daily El PaÃs, Sunday's attack will have an impact on Spanish policy towards peacekeeping missions abroad. In the wake of the attack defence minister Jose Antonio Alonso put on hold the despatch if 50 military instructors to Afghanistan were Spanish troops form part of a NATO force.
Conservative daily ABC said it has learnt that the government is trying to identify among military officials those responsible for the failure to equip the vehicles with frequency inhibitors. Another conservative daily, La Razón, pointed out that Italian troops deployed part of UNIFIL in Lebanon have been equipped with frequency inhibitors, contradicting a Spanish defence ministry statement that said no members of the UNIFIL contingent possessed the anti-remote explosion mechanisms.
