Spain divided over ETA "ceasefire" (News Feature)

By Sinikka Tarvainen Sep 6, 2010, 14:55 GMT

Madrid - Spanish politicians were Monday divided over a ceasefire declared by the militant Basque separatist group ETA, which many saw as a mere stunt, while others believed it could finally pave the way to peace after four decades of bloodshed.

ETA announced on Sunday that it was refraining from 'offensive military actions,' without giving any more details.

The announcement was just a 'tactical move,' Spain's governing Socialist Party's spokesman Jose Antonio Alonso said, echoing most political parties which dismissed the truce as suspicious and insufficient.

The ceasefire contained a message of hope 'without any doubt,' countered Jesus Eguiguren, a Basque Socialist who participated in an earlier attempt to launch peace talks between ETA and Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's government.

ETA has killed between 829 and 858 people (depending on whether only officially confirmed victims are included) since 1968 in its campaign for a Basque state of more than 2 million people created out of northern Spain and southern France.

The group has, however, grown progressively weaker as it has lost support and come under relentless police crackdowns.

Police have detained about 400 ETA suspects over the past four years. The group's leadership has been dismantled five times in just two years, weakening it to the point where it had not carried out significant attacks in Spain since August 2009.

ETA had also come under growing pressure from its political wing Batasuna and related groups to switch from its unpopular military campaign to a purely political strategy in the quest for Basque independence.

Two days before ETA declared the ceasefire, Batasuna called for a 'permanent' truce under international supervision. The party is hoping that such moves would persuade Spanish courts to lift a 2003 ban on its activities ahead of the 2011 local elections.

Earlier on, a group of international personalities including South African Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu and former Irish president Mary Robinson called for a ceasefire in order to launch a Northern Ireland-style peace process.

ETA bowed to the pressure on Sunday, releasing a video on which the ceasefire declaration was read out by a masked woman.

The ambiguous language of the announcement did not meet the expectations of Batasuna, which nevertheless hailed it as launching a new era in the Basque region.

Other political parties distrusted the announcement, fearing ETA was only trying to gain time to rearm and to increase Batasuna's margin of manoeuvre.

The only way forward for ETA was a definitive and complete military surrender, Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba insisted.

The distrust contrasted with the enthusiasm that had been aroused by ETA's previous ceasefire, which persuaded the government to try to launch peace talks with the group in June 2006.

Zapatero's hopes of peace were shattered by a car bombing that killed two people at Madrid airport in the end of that year. Since then, the government has followed a hard line against terrorism and pledged not to talk to ETA again.

The current ceasefire is the 11th declared by ETA since 1981. Spanish governments have made several failed attempts to negotiate with the group. This time, however, some analysts saw something as having changed.

Increasing numbers of ETA sympathizers were now seeing the armed campaign as useless, and an internally divided ETA was finding it more difficult to resist the pressure to lay down arms, analysts said.

'This is a historic, key moment,' Eguiguren said, stressing the 'radical change' that was taking place within Batasuna.

The party did not, however, appear ripe to sever its ties with ETA if the group did not give up violence, Rubalcaba said.

The key question now was, whether Batasuna would be able to persuade ETA to turn the ceasefire into a process of disarmament, the daily El Pais said.

However, Batasuna and ETA were expected to continue insisting on negotiations on Basque independence, a demand that Spanish governments have consistently rejected.