Spain has offered her airbases at Rota in Cádiz and Morón in Sevilla to NATO to be used in the operations to attack General Gaddafi.

Spain has offered her airbases at Rota in Cádiz and Morón in Sevilla to NATO to be used in the operations to attack General Gaddafi.

Spanish Minister for Defence, Carmé Chacón, said Friday that as well as the use of both bases, other naval and air measures would be made available for operations. Chacón said that Spain has ‘adequate air power’. ‘Our responsibility is with the people of Libya’, she said, adding that she hoped that the ‘contained measures’ could be put into action as soon as possible, ‘to avoid a massacre of Gaddafi’s own population, and to avoid the death of innocent people’.

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has been keeping the PP leader Mariano Rajoy fully informed as to developments regarding Libya, and spoke to him by phone on Thursday and will do so again today, Friday. Rajoy is reported to be ‘receptive’ to the Government’s policy on the matter.

It should be recalled that the Spanish participation has to be authorised beforehand in Parliament.

The situation in Libya has been given by the Spanish Government as the reason for the cancellation of a planned trip by the Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, to León where he was to meet with the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon. Instead the two men held a meeting in the Moncloa Palace in Madrid.

Ban Ki Moon will still be welcomed by King Juan Carlos to the Zarzuela Palace at 5pm on Friday.