http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040415-100928-6081r
The speaker offered a “commitment to stopping operations against every country that commits itself to not attacking Muslims or interfering in their affairs — including the U.S. conspiracy against the greater Muslim world,” according to a translation by the British Broadcasting Corp.
The speaker adds that the offer — which he says is renewable by successive governments and begins “with the departure of (the) last soldier from our lands” — will remain on the table for three months.
The offer is being made, he said, in response to “opinion polls, which indicate that most Europeans want peace” and to Europeans’ “positive reactions … to recent events” an apparent reference to the March 14 elections in Spain. Coming just three days after the devastating series of bomb blasts on Madrid commuter trains that killed more than 190 people, the poll resulted in a resounding defeat for President Bush’s ally, Prime Minister Jose Aznar, and the election of the Socialist Party, pledged to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq.