A Spanish influence?

Tuesday morning, Bush met with Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende of the Netherlands; afterwards, there was the usual photo op and a few questions. BuzzFlash makes note of the exchange that occurred when Bush was asked about Kerry's statement that some world leaders had told him privately that they supported him over Bush and Shrub wound up getting a pointed evasion from Balkenende:

President Bush: I think it's - if you're going to make an accusation in the course of a presidential campaign, you ought to back it up with facts.

Prime Minister Balkenende: I won't talk about that issue.

President Bush: Okay, fine.

Prime Minister Balkenende: It has to do with the campaign here in the United States.

However, BuzzFlash missed the next exchange, which I think is much more significant. Bush was asked if he'd convinced Balkenende to keep Dutch troops in Iraq.

President Bush: The Prime Minister will make a - the appropriate decision. It's his decision to make. We both agree that a free Iraq is essential to a peaceful world. We both understand the stakes. We both know that al Qaeda is interested in fighting us in Iraq. How do we know? We know because they've said so publicly. Al Qaeda understands the stakes. Al Qaeda wants us out of Iraq, because al Qaeda wants to use Iraq as an example of defeating freedom and democracy. And so the Prime Minister has got issues at home that he'll deal with. But there's no doubt that he understands the stakes and the historic opportunity with which we're faced.

Prime Minister Balkenende: It's good to add that we did not talk about the situation after the half of July. That is the responsible of the Dutch government and Dutch parliament and we'll talk about it, as I made it clear already, earlier. But I think it's very good to look always to the situation of the Iraq people and the international struggle against terrorism. Therefore, it's so important that countries are working together and they can draw the same lines. That's very important, but it has nothing to, at this moment, to the decision-making as far as the situation after the 1st of July is concerned.

Translation: Bush is still in there pitching but the Netherlands has made no commitment to keeping troops in Iraq beyond July 1. In fact, it sounds more like Balkenende is laying the ground for a withdrawal.

Why that might be true is easy to see: Balkenende's Christian Democrats, like their soulmates of the Popular Party in Spain, are a generally conservative body facing massive public opposition to their involvement in Iraq. In Spain, the PP tried to downplay the whole issue, simply making a seemingly offhand reference a while back saying there'd be no troop withdrawal "in the near future," which sounded to me like an attempt to look like they were stepping toward the majority position without actually changing policy. In Spain, that proved to be not good enough. Balkenende, by hinting at the possibility of a definite change after July 1, may be trying to avoid that outcome.