Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero

MADRID (Reuters) - Spain's Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is under attack from some of his own left-wing allies, who accuse him of a haphazard response to the economic crisis and of surrounding himself with yes-men. A former economy minister who served under Felipe Gonzalez, the last Socialist prime minister before Zapatero, has joined his old boss in criticizing the current head of government. "Zapatero's mistake is to concentrate political power in himself, which implicitly devalues the role of the rest of the government," said Carlos Solchaga, in an interview with the Spanish edition of Vanity Fair out on Monday. With the conservative ... Read Full Story

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said on Tuesday he was committed to President Barack Obama's goal of closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay and was firming up which inmates Spain would take. Zapatero, in his first Oval Office visit since pulling Spanish troops out of Iraq in 2004, did not say exactly how many inmates from the U.S. military prison in Cuba his country would accept. Some news reports have said Spain would take no more than three. The Obama administration asked Madrid earlier in the year to accept four prisoners from Guantanamo, where the United States ... Read Full Story

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is to meet President Barack Obama in Washington, culminating years of efforts to mend ties damaged by the Iraq war when George W. Bush was in office. It is the first official invitation of a Spanish premier to the White House since Zapatero's 2004 announcement that he was withdrawing his country's troops from Iraq, arguing that the U.S.-led invasion was illegal. That move infuriated the Bush administration, which had close relations with Zapatero's conservative predecessor, Jose Maria Aznar. Zapatero's Socialist government welcomed Obama's election as an opportunity to mend relations. Zapatero is to fly to Washington Monday ... Read Full Story

US President Barack Obama will make his first official to Spain in May to attend a US-EU summit, Spanish public television said Sunday. The May 24-25 summit is scheduled as part of Spain's six-month presidency of the European Union that begins on January 1, RTVE said. A source at the office of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero would confirm only that an EU-US summit would take place in Madrid during Spain's EU presidency, "probably in May." RTVE, which did not indicate its sources, also said that the Spanish capital will host a summit involving the EU, Latin America and the Caribbean on May ... Read Full Story

Spain's prime minister will meet with President Barack Obama next month at the White House, officials said Friday, the culmination of a Spanish drive to repair ties that were frayed over the Iraq war when George W. Bush was in power. Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero will be received in Washington Oct. 13, his office said. He and Obama conferred in April on the sidelines of a European Union-U.S. summit in Prague, but this will be the first time one receives the other in a formal visit and the first that Zapatero will have set foot in the White House since coming to ... Read Full Story