Socialist leader Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero was sworn in as Spanish prime minister on Saturday and picked a Cabinet blending newcomers with experienced hands in charge of the economy and foreign policy.
King Juan Carlos presided over the solemn ceremony at the Zarzuela palace near Madrid, completing a shake-up of Spanish politics in the wake of last month's suspected al Qaeda-linked train bombings that killed 191 people.
"I promise on my conscience and honor to comply faithfully with the obligations of prime minister ...," Zapatero said, watched by outgoing Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar.
PHOTO: AP
Zapatero chose to take a non-religious oath of office -- promising with his hand on the Spanish Constitution -- rather than swearing on the Bible.
He becomes Spain's fifth prime minister since democracy was restored after the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975.
Later Zapatero, 43, announced a Cabinet of eight men and eight women, fulfilling a promise to appoint equal numbers of men and women. Aznar's last Cabinet included five women.
Zapatero's Cabinet includes many members with no ministerial experience, but he put the most critical portfolios in seasoned hands.
His Socialists were the surprise winners of elections held three days after the March 11 train bombings, ousting the strongly pro-US Popular Party.
The Socialists won 164 seats in the lower house of parliament -- 12 short of an absolute majority -- and need support from regional or left-wing parties to get their policies through.
Mariano Rajoy, leader of the main opposition Popular Party, attacked the new government in a speech on Saturday, calling it weak and unstable.
Pedro Solbes, who stepped down early as EU monetary affairs commissioner, will oversee one of the euro zone's fastest growing economies, taking the helm of a powerful, combined economy and finance ministry.
Solbes, 61, served as agriculture and, later, economy minister under Felipe Gonzalez, Spain's last Socialist prime minister.
Miguel Angel Moratinos, 52, a veteran diplomat and former EU Middle East envoy, takes over as foreign minister.
He will need all his diplomatic skills if Zapatero goes ahead with his pledge to withdraw Spain's 1,300 troops from Iraq unless the UN takes charge there by the end of June.
US President George W. Bush has urged Spain and other allies in Iraq to stick with Washington.
Moratinos will leave on an official visit to Washington tomorrow, a day after taking office, to show Zapatero's interest in maintaining good relations with the US, ABC said. A Socialist party spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.
Moratinos will hold talks with US Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
He will stop over in Dublin for talks with Brian Cowen, foreign minister of current EU president Ireland, on the proposed EU constitution, ABC said.
Spanish opposition to a change in EU voting rules helped block agreement on the new constitution, but Zapatero has pledged to do all he can to get an agreement by mid-year.
Zapatero named Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega, 54, a former secretary of state for justice, as first deputy prime minister while Solbes becomes second deputy prime minister.
Zapatero chose Socialist party heavyweight Jose Bono as defense minister. Bono, 53, will have to repair relations with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who he insulted earlier this year in private remarks to a colleague that were picked up by a television station's microphone.
The investigation of the March 11 bombings will be entrusted to Jose Antonio Alonso, 44, a former judge.
He takes over the Interior Ministry, while law professor Juan Fernando Lopez, 42, becomes justice minister.
Twenty-one people including 15 Moroccans are being held in connection with the March 11 attacks on packed commuter trains.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS