WASHINGTON (AP) --

Spain gave in to threats and voted to appease terrorists" in the election Sunday that turned out a top U.S. ally in the counterterror war, the top Republican in Congress said Wednesday.

The comments by House Speaker Rep. Dennis Hastert strongly contrast with those of President Bush, who has sidestepped the question of whether the election results could encourage terrorists.

Meanwhile, a top Bush administration official said the Spanish government was defeated in national elections in part because it initially held Basque separatists accountable for last week's train bombings and didn't get what information did exist out to the public."

Speaking to Capitol Hill reporters on another subject, Hastert, R-Ill., called Spain a nation who succumbed ... to threats of terrorism, changed their government."

Asked if he was referring to Spain, he said: Well I'm saying, they changed their government because of the perception of threat."

Here's a country who stood against terrorism and had a huge terrorist act within their country and they chose to change their government and to in a sense appease terrorists," Hastert said.

By comparison, when Bush was asked Tuesday whether the vote gave terrorists reason to believe that they can influence elections and policy, he replied: I think terrorists will kill innocent life in order to try to get the world to cower. I think these are cold-blooded killers."

Meanwhile, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said he thought the vote was a protest by the people against the handling of the terrorist event by the sitting government of Spain."

Probably part of it" was that the defeated conservative government of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar -- a key U.S. ally -- initially held Basque separatists accountable and didn't get what information did exist out to the public," Armitage said in an interview on Philadelphia radio station WPHT.

Backing up Armitage, a State Department spokesman, Adam Ereli, said the debate in Spain, I think clearly shows, the issue of how the investigation was handled was an electoral issue."

But Ereli also said that Armitage was commenting on what was being said in Spain and not commenting on whether that assessment is right or wrong."

After initially pointing the finger at Basque separatists, the Spanish government has since said it is investigating a top suspect's possible links to the al-Qaida terrorist network.

In two other interviews, as well, Armitage referred to what he described as the former government's mishandling" of the terror attack, the bloodiest in Spain's history with 201 people dead.

Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, visiting President Bush at the White House Wednesday, suggested the Spanish government's actions after the attacks created some problems.

The position switched over a few days and, you know, how that was presented to the Spanish people obviously created some difficulties," Ahern, who also is currently the president of the European Union, told reporters. A lot of people believed that it was al Qaida or was some terrorism groups, and they felt that the ETA position was the only one that was being put to them."

But while acknowledging that events do as we saw last week and can color election results," Ahern said the important thing now is for countries to work together against terrorism.

There is an imperative on all of us to work on security issues and to try to cooperate on those," he said. We have to implement good anti-terrorism measures."

Armitage, the State Department's No. 2 official, praised Aznar, who supported the U.S. war in Iraq despite the opposition of most Spaniards, as being committed in principle to going after terrorists. We'll have to give the new prime minister some time to get his sea legs and see how he comes out on things," Armitage said.

On Wednesday in Madrid, Prime Minister-elect Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero renewed a pledge to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq. He called the U.S.-led occupation a fiasco."

Zapatero also said Spanish police agencies had failed to prevent the bombings despite knowing the whereabouts and potential danger of a top suspect and his alleged links with al-Qaida, the terror network believed to have been instrumental in the bombings last Thursday.

A senior U.S. official said Armitage's remarks reflected widespread criticism within the Bush administration of the Aznar government as pointing an accusing finger at Basque separatists, even though evidence was mounting that al-Qaida and not the separatists were involved in the bombing.

The official, who declined to be publicly identified, reinforced what the deputy secretary of state had said in interviews on Tuesday.