Spain’s newly-installed prime minister Jose Zapatero took time out from overseeing the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq to come to the defense of Yasser Arafat: Spain’s Leader Criticizes Israeli Threat to Arafat.

“I don’t think certain threats, that undoubtedly contribute to intensifying the climate of tension…are the right way,” Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero told a news conference during a visit to Morocco.

He was responding to a question about threats by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon against the Palestinian president.

Sharon said on Israeli television this week he was no longer bound by a pledge not to harm Arafat.

“The Spanish government will work intensely with all those countries…that also want a new stage to start urgently in the situation between Israel and Palestine,” Zapatero said.

The following news does not give me a warm, hopeful feeling, except that it may be merely a diplomatic sop to Spain (if it’s true, which I doubt):

Miguel Angel Moratinos, foreign minister in Zapatero’s Socialist government that has been in power for a week, said on Thursday that the United States had asked him to help promote Middle East peace. Moratinos was for seven years the European Union’s special envoy to the Middle East.

Despite his highly visible visits to Arafat’s stinky Muqata office, Moratinos never did anything that affected policy in any way; he’s an ideal cipher, the perfect powerless EU puppethead.