"SPAIN is launching a diplomatic offensive to rebuild its relationship with Britain and the United States after its fierce criticism of the Iraq war," Miguel Ángel Moratinos, the Spanish Foreign Minister, told The Times yesterday.

I'd advise The Times not to believe the guy; he usually lies through his teeth, and in his soulmate Arafat pure style, he says one thing to the foreign media, and another completely different one when he's talking to the Spanish press.

Now get this, and see if you can make any sense of it. I can't:

“We became very angry when we were told that terrorists facilitated the Socialist victory,” he said. “We consider that an insult to our democracy and our citizens.

“On the contrary, the terrorists would have won if they had reinforced the policies of the previous Government. The terrorists were defeated because the people said: ‘Enough of this policy, we want to have a democratic change.’ The perception was manipulated so that it appeared that our position on Iraq was an appeasement of the War on Terror. But from the beginning we said: ‘Please don’t misunderstand us, the terrorists have their own agenda and we have our own and we must not play theirs.’ And that has been the main mistake. Britain and the USA went to war in Iraq because there were weapons of mass destruction, not because of bin Laden, who was in Afghanistan. So why mix up Iraq with that?

Well, actually I can, make sense of this: it certainly proves 1/ he's an ignorant and can't read the statements by the terrorists rejoicing over Aznar's defeat and congratulating Zapatero for his victory; 2/ he thinks it's all of us who don't know and tries to manipulate things to his, and Zapatero's, advantage.