Spain disappointed over Obama summit no-show

A senior Spanish official expressed disappointment Tuesday that President Barack Obama will not be attending an EU-US summit in Spain and hope that the meeting can be rescheduled.

"I think the U.S. administration is and must be aware of what Europe is. It is an economic power and top flight political player in the world in which we live," said Jose Antonio Alonso, who is the governing Socialist party's spokesman in Parliament and close to Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

Spain currently holds the European Union's rotating presidency and was to host the meeting in May in Madrid. On Monday morning, the government's top official for European affairs, Diego Lopez Garrido, said the government presumed that Obama would attend the summit. Such meetings have been held yearly since the 1990s, usually alternating between Europe and the United States. Obama attended one last year in Prague.

But the U.S. State Department said later Monday that Obama would not in fact attend the meeting in Madrid because the summit does not fit into his travel schedule for this year and that he had never committed to coming.

An official in Zapatero's office downplayed what media in Spain widely interpreted as a slight to Zapatero and even to Europe in general.

The official said Spain understood that Obama has a packed domestic agenda. But the official seemed to leave open the possibility that the summit might be downgraded or even called off, saying it is up to the Spanish presidency and the EU in Brussels to decide when and with what format it might be held now that Obama is not coming in May.

Alonso said, "We hope and desire that the meeting between the U.S. administration and the European Union can be held at some point."

Zapatero will see Obama on Thursday in Washington as a guest at an event called the National Prayer Breakfast.

In Brussels, the European Commission called Obama's nonattendance an issue of conflicting agendas. "First and foremost it is an issue for the Spanish presidency" to handle, spokesman Michael Mann said. "We will work with the United States to work for a mutually agreeable date for the summit."

Spain's opposition conservatives said Obama's decision means the Americans do not consider Spain under Zapatero to be an important country.

"Perhaps even though (Zapatero) has been invited to the National Prayer Breakfast, they do not consider Spain, right now with this government, to be a major country," said Gustavo de Aristegui, the Popular Party's spokesman on foreign affairs.