Spain a Crucial Vote on Nato

By Michael S. Serrill

The statue of Christopher Columbus, tall atop a rococo column in the spacious Madrid plaza, gazed off toward the New World as more than 750,000 Spaniards gathered in the square and streets and parks around it. Chanted the crowd: "NATO no! Bases out!"

That rally and a dozen others like it that have been held in recent weeks in Spain are part of a heated debate preceding a referendum over whether Spain should remain a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The vote takes place this week, and preballot polls show the pro-NATO forces losing in a close contest.

At the center of the debate is Socialist Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez Marquez, who swept into office in 1982 partly on the strength of his call for a referendum on NATO, which Spain had joined only a few months before in an effort to move closer to the rest of Europe and assure the safety of its fragile democracy. The Socialist campaign took advantage of some strong anti- American feeling, which is a legacy of U.S. backing for General Francisco Franco, who ruled Spain from 1939 until his death in 1975. The U.S. has had military bases in Spain since 1953.

Upon taking office, Gonzalez reversed his anti-NATO position but was nonetheless obliged to go ahead with the referendum. He now sees NATO membership as part of a policy of close ties with the rest of Europe, which was epitomized by Spain's entry into the European Community in January. But Gonzalez's turnaround on the issue has created turmoil in his Socialist Party. He says he will be happy if a mere majority of the Socialists support him.

Gonzalez will get little help from his pro-NATO parliamentary opponents, led by Manuel Fraga Iribarne of the Popular Alliance Party. Fraga has seized on the issue as a way to embarrass the Socialists and has urged his followers to abstain. But last week a prominent member of the Popular Alliance, Maria Fernandez Espana, resigned, saying that the party's policy was "dangerous."

! Convincing Spanish voters to back NATO has been a difficult task. When the informal referendum campaign began 2 1/2 years ago, only 17% favored continued membership in the alliance. By last week the gap had narrowed, yet all but one of the last polls before the vote showed Gonzalez going down to defeat.

Though still trailing, Gonzalez and his supporters worked extremely hard to make the vote closer than expected with a clever campaign in which they attempted to turn any anti-Americanism on its head. "Isn't it better to discuss our defense with our European partners instead of just with the Americans?" asked Gonzalez. In an effort to increase the size of the yes vote, the referendum promises, in addition, that nuclear weapons would continue to be prohibited on Spanish soil and the number of authorized U.S. troops in Spain would be reduced from its current number of 12,000.

As the voting day approached, European and U.S. diplomats waited with apprehension, hoping Gonzalez could pull off a miracle. From a military standpoint, Spain's withdrawal would matter little, since even now the country is not part of NATO's unified military command structure. But NATO Secretary- General Lord Carrington warned that a referendum defeat would result in a "very grave weakening of the alliance."

With reporting by B.J. Phillips and Jane Walker/ Madrid