Spain cuts financial funding to alliance

MADRID - Anatolia News Agency

Spain’s Prime Minister Rajoy arrives at Inchon airport outside Seoul on March 26. AFP photo

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has reportedly told U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that Spain will not give financial support to the Alliance of Civilizations project because of the economic crisis in the country, but promised to continue its “political commitment.”

Ban has asked the Spanish government, led by Rajoy, to continue its co-leadership to the project. Rajoy said the country was facing an economic crisis and would thus decrease its financial support to the alliance, adding that it used to provide the biggest economic aid to the project, Spanish state television TVE quoted government sources as saying. Rajoy also told Ban that the alliance should be “more visible and effective.” The Alliance of Civilizations, established in 2005 as a joint initiative of Spain and Turkey under the auspices of the U.N., seeks to address tensions across cultural divides that threaten to inflame existing political conflicts or trigger new ones. However, the Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo said earlier this month that he did not know what to do with the Alliance of Civilizations initiative, and that the value of continuing the initiative should be discussed.