Inocencio Arias

Inocencio F. Arias, also known as Chencho (born April 20, 1940 in Albox, Almería province), is a multifarious Spanish diplomat, who served as consul general in Los Angeles, California, United States.

[1] In the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Arias was Director of the Diplomatic Information Office and spokesman of the Department with quite different democratic administrations: center, 1980–82; socialist, 1985–88; and center-right, 1996-97.

Martin Prieto in "El Mundo" writes that Arias, after examining the origins and development of the Iraq war, states that without the terrorist attack of March 2003 in Madrid the center-right Popular Party would have won the elections of that year and examines the European antiamericanism plus the American ignorance of Europe.

In addition, Mr. Arias authored a book about three famous football stars ("Los Tres Mitos del Real Madrid"): Di Stéfano, Butragueño and Raúl; and edited a multilingual international soccer dictionary during the Football World Cup hosted by Spain in 1982.

The mainstream media seemed to agree [2] stating "it's no secret that the Spanish government is unhappy with comments made by Arias" who said that "if weapons of mass destruction were not found in Iraq, the justification of the decision to go to war would be undermined".