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ETA ready for peace if Spanish 'attacks' stop
Armed Basque separatists ETA yesterday offered to make new commitments to the stagnated peace process if the Spanish state stopped its "attacks" in the Basque region, where police have been arresting ETA suspects.
- Reuters
- Published: 00:00 April 9, 2007
Madrid: Armed Basque separatists ETA yesterday offered to make new commitments to the stagnated peace process if the Spanish state stopped its "attacks" in the Basque region, where police have been arresting ETA suspects.
"Those who have divided the Basque homeland, and their successors, have taken on the enormous task of destroying the identity of our people," the interview in Basque language newspaper Gara said.
"They must abandon this policy of imposition and give our citizens the democratic tools to ... build a future," it said.
Gara, ETA's usual mouthpiece, published the interview on a nationalist holiday in the northern region accompanied by a photograph of two hooded and masked fighters sitting at a table.
It was the group's first statement since January, when it claimed responsibility for a car bomb that killed two people at Madrid's Barajas airport.
"If the attacks on the Basque homeland disappear, we are prepared to make firm commitments to a scenario of non-violence," the interview with the unnamed fighters said.
Offensive
Many ETA members have been arrested in the group's heartland in a government offensive after the January bomb. Police said 10 days ago they were on maximum alert after finding hundreds of kilos of explosives and bomb-making equipment.
ETA blamed the Socialist government and the moderate Basque Nationalist Party for the blockage of the peace process. ETA was still committed to a democratic solution to the Basque conflict, it said, and stood by its ceasefire declaration of March 2006.
The guerrillas said the same in their last statement, despite claiming responsibility for the Madrid airport bomb - its first fatal attack since May 2003.
But they denied ETA had lost credibility with its Barajas bomb - during a ceasefire - and instead criticised the "wild" attacks of Basque police on street protesters.
After the January airport bomb, the Spanish government said it was abandoning a peace process which many had hoped would end ETA's violent four-decade campaign for independence in the Basque Country, located in northern Spain and southwest France.
Many believe, however, that the government has continued to seek dialogue with ETA, prompting consistent criticism from Spain's right-wing opposition Popular Party who accuse the Socialist government of making concessions to terrorists.
ETA said it could not imagine May regional elections taking place without the radical Basque left.
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