Spanish government burns bridges with ETA

By Sinikka Tarvainen Jan 10, 2007, 11:50 GMT

Madrid - The Spanish government Wednesday rejected any possibility of reviving a peace process with the armed Basque separatist group ETA, bracing for a wave of violence despite the group's announcement that it maintained its nine-month ceasefire.

ETA's communique, in which it also claimed responsibility for a December 30 car bombing, 'ratifies without doubt that ETA has clearly broken the truce,' Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega said.

ETA 'has broken everything and closed the door,' she added.

The conservative opposition called for a tough line against ETA, with its leader Mariano Rajoy saying he would demand the annulment of a 2005 parliamentary resolution which had authorized the government to negotiate with the group.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero announced peace talks in June, but the process soon stalled, and the government broke it off after ETA planted a car bomb at Madrid airport, killing two people and injuring 26 others.

In a communique issued on Tuesday, however, ETA said it had not meant to harm anyone and claimed to maintain its ceasefire while threatening new attacks if the authorities continued arresting and trying separatists.

Such 'incoherent' language reflected the internal contradictions of the group - thought to be divided into hawks and doves - and deprived it of any credibility, the daily El Pais said in an editorial.

Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said no-one would take ETA's truces seriously any more. The 'only road' left for the group was to abandon violence, he added in a separate statement.

Analysts said the purpose of the Madrid attack had been to press the government to make concessions in a peace process marred with expectations difficult to reconcile.

The government was only prepared to make some practical concessions, such as moving imprisoned ETA activists to jails closer to their homes, possibly releasing some of them and helping them readapt to normal life.

ETA, however, is seeking a referendum on a sovereign Basque state carved out of northern Spain and southern France. The group is blamed for more than 800 deaths in its violent campaign of nearly four decades.

ETA had 'broken its own rules' by progressively resuming violence - first street hooliganism and then the Madrid bombing - despite having declared a 'permanent' ceasefire, the daily El Mundo observed.

The government was bracing for new attacks by stepping up security, offering new bodyguards to dozens of Basque politicians and other potential ETA targets who had shed theirs, trusting the ceasefire would hold.

The government also sought to rally parliament behind a new anti- ETA strategy based partly on police crackdowns. On Tuesday, French police already detained two men suspected of links with the Madrid attack.

The Socialist government did not, however, want to completely count out the possibility of future negotiations, a stance opposed by the conservative People's Party (PP), which believes ETA should be defeated only with a punitive strategy.

It was expected to be difficult for the government to reconciliate the PP's views with those of the Basque region's governing moderate Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), which has separatist currents.

The PNV's support was vital for the government's plans of isolating ETA through its political wing Batasuna, which was banned in 2003, analysts said.

The Madrid attack took Batasuna by surprise and destroyed the party's hopes of becoming re-legalized in order to contest the local elections in May.

Batasuna has so far refused to condemn ETA's violence, but the government was hoping to nudge it towards distancing itself from the group.