McCain Meant To Reject Spain Meeting, Adviser Says

Sam Stein
Huffington Post

The McCain campaign insisted Thursday morning that the Senator meant what he said when, during an interview on Spanish radio, he refused to commit to a meeting with Spain's prime minister, Jose Luis Zapatero.

"The questioner asked several times about Senator McCain's willingness to meet Zapatero (and id'd him in the question so there is no doubt Senator McCain knew exactly to whom the question referred). Senator McCain refused to commit to a White House meeting with President Zapatero in this interview," the Senator's foreign policy adviser Randy Sheunemann told the Washington Post.

Sheunemann's answer is likely to be cause deep ripples within the diplomatic community, as it represents a more aggressive and antagonistic approach than that deployed by the Bush administration. It also promises to be hotly contested, as a review of the McCain interview suggests that the Senator was confused as to who Zapatero actually was.

Appearing on the Miami-based Union Radio, a Spanish language radio station that conducted its interview in English, McCain touted his record "of working with leaders in the hemisphere that are friends with us, and standing up to those who are not." This came even after the questioner began that portion of the interview by saying: "let's talk about Spain."

(Continued here.)