A weakened ETA seeks a political price for peace (News Feature)

By Sinikka Tarvainen Jan 10, 2011, 14:24 GMT

Madrid - The armed Basque separatist group ETA, which has cast a shadow over Spain with its shootings and car bombings for over four decades, is fading away.

That, at least, is the assessment of a growing number of Spanish officials and analysts who describe Western Europe's last armed nationalist movement as being in a 'terminal phase.'

There had been a widespread expectation that ETA would consolidate its four-month ceasefire by making it 'permanent' - a step that the group finally took on Monday.

However, ETA continued insisting that an eventual peace process with Spain should deal with the possibility of Basque independence - a subject Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's government firmly refuses to discuss.

Founded in 1959 during the 1939-75 dictatorship of Francisco Franco, who repressed Spain's cultural minorities, ETA launched an armed campaign in 1968.

It has killed nearly 860 people by now to force Spain and France to cede a part of their territories for a sovereign Basque state.

ETA's current ceasefire, which it declared on September 5, is its eleventh since 1981. Previous attempts at peace talks have collapsed, while the group has often used truces to rebuild its military capacity.

But this time - many analysts believe - the situation is different.

For the first time, ETA's political wing Batasuna and related groups appear to have became convinced of the futility of an armed strategy in order to achieve Basque independence, and are pressuring ETA to lay down arms.

ETA's urban warfare has served only to undermine its popularity and prompted Spain to step up police and judicial crackdowns, many ETA supporters now conclude.

Batasuna was outlawed in 2003, and its successors have also been prevented from contesting elections, leaving radical separatists practically without representation in Basque political institutions.

In yet another blow to radical separatists, the Basque region has been governed since 2009 by Zapatero's Socialist Party. It has banned tributes to ETA members, and largely removed pro-ETA slogans or posters from Basque streets.

Such measures along with the ceasefire have created a new atmosphere of calm, in which only 19 per cent of the Basques now feel worried about terrorism, down two-thirds from 2004, according to a recent poll.

Deeming that the time could be ripe for ETA to give in, a group of international personalities including three Nobel Peace Prize laureates and former Irish president Mary Robinson signed the so-called Brussels Declaration in 2010, encouraging the Basque group to move towards a Northern Ireland-style peace process.

At the same time, about 100 of the more than 600 ETA members who are currently in Spanish jails have broken up with the group over its violence, the daily El Pais reported.

Batasuna and its entourage are now preparing to launch a new political party in an attempt to contest the Basque municipal elections in May.

It was, however, deemed unlikely that Spain would authorize the party as long as Batasuna did not explicitly condemn the violence of ETA or the group did not dissolve.

ETA was believed to be internally divided over the possibility of a surrender and over its conditions.

'ETA will put a price to its dissolution, but we will not pay that,' Minister for the Prime Minister's Office Ramon Jauregui said.

The government deeply distrusts ETA after it broke its previous ceasefire with a car bombing that killed two people in December 2006.

The current ceasefire has not prevented the group from maintaining activities such as sending extortion letters to Basque entrepreneurs, Jauregui pointed out. ETA has traditionally financed a part of its activities with 'revolutionary taxes' extracted from the business community.

Yet even if ETA does not yet enter a peace process at this stage, only 'remains' will be left of the group within a decade, a group of experts predicted recently in a study carried out for a foundation close to the Socialist Party.

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