Embassy Row

Spanish send-off

Spain’s Socialist government is trying hard to mend relations with the United States after angering Washington this spring by pulling Spanish troops out of Iraq after a terrorist attack in Madrid.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero held a “cordial and constructive” meeting last week with U.S. Ambassador George Argyros, who is ending his diplomatic tour later this month, sources told the French news agency Agence France-Presse.

The meeting followed an announcement by Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos that Spain will help evacuate U.S. citizens from the crisis-torn West African nation of Ivory Coast.

Rabin remembered

The Israeli Embassy commemorated the ninth anniversary of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by recalling his legacy as a fighter and a peacemaker.

Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, the embassy’s defense attache, said Mr. Rabin was a “soldier who helped build the state of Israel” as a commander of the Israel Defense Forces.

“At the same time, Rabin was a leader who constantly strove for peace,” Gen. Yadlin said.

Mr. Rabin was killed by an Israeli extremist who opposed the leader’s efforts to negotiate the 1993 peace accords with Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader who died Thursday.

Diplomatic traffic

Foreign visitors in Washington this week include:

Today

• Rashid Mohamed Rashid, Egyptian minister of foreign trade and industry, and Taher Helmy, president of the America Chamber of Commerce in Cairo. Mr. Rashid addresses the Institute for International Economics.

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