MADRID, March 15: Spain's prime minister-elect Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero vowed Monday to withdraw troops from Iraq and criticized US President George W. Bush after Spanish voters ousted governing conservatives who took the country into the controversial war.

"The war in Iraq was a disaster, the occupation of Iraq is a disaster," Zapatero, 43, told Cadena Ser radio. He spoke just before the European Union held three minutes' silence in tribute to the 200 people killed in last Thursday's bombings of crowded Madrid commuter trains.

An ongoing investigation into the attacks has found growing evidence they were carried out by Islamic extremists linked to Al-Qaeda as punishment for Spain's help in the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Voters turned out in force for Sunday's elections. Many of them expressed anger at retiring Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar when he cast his ballot, jostling and booing him while some shouted "Aznar: your war, our dead."

Zapatero, whose Socialist Party ended eight years of rule by Aznar's Popular Party (PP) after winning 43 per cent of the ballots to the PP's 38 per cent, said near-total public opposition to the Iraq war had been key.

He said that barring new developments in Iraq before June 30 - the date the United States has promised to hand power over to an Iraqi provisional government - Spain's 1,300 troops in Iraq "will return home" as he had promised before the elections.

The other occupying states will be contacted for consultations on withdrawing the soldiers, he said. Zapatero also said Bush and his main ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, need to engage in "self-criticism".

"You can't bomb a people just in case" they pose a perceived threat, Mr Zapatero said in statements just five days before the first anniversary of the March 20 start of the war.

"You can't organize a war on the basis of lies," he said, alluding to Bush's and Blair's insistence the war was justified by their belief - so far unfounded - that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that posed an imminent threat. "Wars such as that which has occurred in Iraq only allow hatred, violence and terror to proliferate," Mr Zapatero said. -AFP