Terrorism & Security
posted January 3, 2007 at 12:35 p.m.

ETA political wing supports Basque peace process despite bombing

ETA's Batasuna party calls for bombers to explain airport attack as Spain declares peace talks 'finished.'

By Arthur Bright | csmonitor.com

The political wing of the Basque separatist group ETA has called for ETA militants to explain why they bombed a garage at Madrid's Barajas airport Saturday.

The BBC reports that a spokesman for Batasuna, ETA's political party that was outlawed by Spain in 2003, told reporters at a news conference Wednesday that peace talks with the Spanish government were "not broken" and "our commitment is for [the process] to move forward". Earlier, a Batasuna official told Basque radio that the explosion "was not expected by anyone, even though we all knew the [peace] process was in crisis."



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[Joseba Alvarez] accused Spain's Socialist government of failing to take any "concrete steps... to create favourable conditions" for a solution.

But he also said the planting of a bomb without previously announcing the end of a ceasefire was "something new" for Eta. "It is up to Eta to explain why it acted in that way," he said.

The explosion leveled a five-story garage at the "glittering new terminal" of the Barajas airport, reports AP. Twenty-six people were injured in the blast, and two Ecuadorean men who were sleeping in their cars when the bomb went off are still missing.

The ETA, whose name is a Basque acronym for "Basque Homeland and Freedom," began fighting for a Basque nation in the 1960s during the reign of Gen. Francisco Franco's dictatorship. The group continued to commit acts of violence, including bombings and assassinations, after Spain's turn to democracy in the 1970s, and is currently on the US's official list of international terrorist organizations. In March 2006, it declared a permanent cease-fire with the Spanish government. Spain opened peace talks with ETA in June 2006.

Mr. Alvarez's comments to Basque radio come just a day after Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba declared the peace process finished. Bloomberg reports that Mr. Rubalcaba placed the blame for the talks' collapse squarely on the ETA.

"It's ETA who has broken, done away with and ended the peace process," Perez Rubalcaba said today at a Madrid press conference.

Ignacio Astarloa, a member of the Popular Party, earlier today asked the government to make a "formal declaration" of the end of talks with the group, which has killed more than 800 people in 40 years. ...

"Now that this is clear, it would be fantastic to be able to work together to try to end the problem of violence in Spain," Perez Rubalcaba said. He added he has scheduled meetings with all of the political parties to inform them of the situation and discuss strategy Jan. 9 and 10.

Deutsche Presse-Agentur writes that the newspaper El Pais reports the Spanish government will now "seek a pact of all the parliamentary parties in a new strategy to defeat ETA through police and judicial pressure...." The previous antiterrorism pact was only between the ruling Socialist party and the opposition conservative People's Party. The new strategy will also aim to further isolate Batasuna.

Batasuna is already suffering from the fallout of the ETA's attack. EiTB, the Basque public broadcast service, reports that at least one Basque party has ceased talks with Batasuna.

Secretary of Organisation of the Basque Socialist PSE-EE Rodolfo Ares announced on Monday that his party had suspended "its talks with the leftist Nationalists".

Ares stated that "dialogue is incompatible with violence and it is impossible to continue our commitment to dialoguing with those who carry out or excuse violent attacks and show no will to change their attitude".

At a press conference held in Bilbao, the Socialist leader assured that he considered "a mistake by the Basque government and the Basque Premier to continue dialogue" with banned Batasuna, "as if nothing has happened".

Despite the Spanish government's cessation of peace talks, Madrid does not see the bombing as the start of a new ETA terror campaign. Reuters reports that Spanish Attorney General Candido Conde-Pumpido said that the decline that pushed the ETA into peace talks last year will prevent it from sustaining terrorist activities.

"I think that ETA's time of terrorism has run out for ever and the situation is irreversible. I think ETA has been defeated, and we are at its funeral," Conde-Pumpido said.

There have been no ETA-related fatalities since May 2003, but crews are still working at the site of the Barajas terminal, and Thomas Crosbie Media reports that rescue teams have given up hope of finding alive the two Ecuadoreans caught in the blast. After four days of recovery efforts, the garage bomb site remains covered by tons of concrete rubble.

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