Spanish government rejects new talks with ETA (Roundup)

Jan 9, 2007, 16:31 GMT

Madrid - The Spanish government Tuesday dismissed the possibility of new peace talks with the armed Basque separatist group ETA after it said its ceasefire remained in force despite claiming responsibility for a recent car bombing at Madrid airport.

Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said he did not think it would be possible to relaunch the peace talks cut off by the government after the Madrid bombing killed two people on December 30.

ETA 'only has one road left,' that of 'ending violence,' Rubalcaba added.

ETA sent a communique to the Basque newspaper Gara, accusing 'obstacles' created by the government for the difficulties of the peace process.

It said the government had not honoured its pledges and vowed to respond to 'aggressions against the Basque Country.'

ETA said it had not intended to harm anyone with the car bomb planted at a Madrid airport parking lot, which killed two Ecuadorians and injured 26 other people.

The group said it had made three warning calls to allow police to evacuate the airport.

ETA requested a 'political agreement' on the rights of the Basque region as a way out of the 38-year conflict that has claimed more than 800 lives.

The Madrid attack prompted the government to break off a six-month incipient peace process, saying talks were irremediably over.

The conservative opposition has expressed the suspicion that the government has not definitively ended the peace process, but may want to relaunch it in secret.

ETA's political wing Batasuna had accused the government of hampering the peace process by continuing the arrests and trials of separatists. The government also refuses to discuss ETA's demand of a referendum on a sovereign Basque state.

On Monday, Batasuna had called on ETA to maintain the 'permanent' ceasefire it declared on March 22.

Batasuna denied having planned its comments in cooperation with anyone, but analysts thought it possible they had been agreed with ETA to pave the way for Tuesday's announcement.

French police meanwhile captured two ETA activists suspected of links with the Madrid bombing. The arrests were made in coordination with Spanish police.

Asier Larrinaga Rodriguez and Garikoitz Etxebarria Goikotxea were detained when walking in the centre of Ascain in southern France. A pistol was confiscated from the men, who did not resist arrest.

Police were searching for two other suspects.

Rubalcaba said Larrinaga and Etxebarria had been involved with explosives discovered in the Basque region before and after the Madrid attack.

Police thought it possible the explosives had been handled by the same cell that staged the bombing.

Larrinaga probably fled to France after the discovery of an explosives cache in Amorebieta on December 23, police sources were quoted as saying.

He was thought to have left behind 180 kilos of explosives in Atxondo, where they were found after the Madrid attack.

Rubalcaba meanwhile launched a round of talks with parliamentary parties in an attempt to rally them behind the government after the end of the peace process.

The minister started the round with a meeting with Eduardo Zaplana of the conservative People's Party (PP), whose leader Mariano Rajoy had failed to find common ground with Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero on Monday.

Rajoy urged the Socialists to resume a hard line against ETA and to renew their 2000 anti-terrorism pact with the PP. Zaplana said Tuesday 'anyone who likes' could join the pact, which the government wants to widen to other parties.

Rubalcaba said he wanted the 'widest possible' agreement, but admitted that would be difficult to achieve rapidly.

Zapatero was expected to inform parliament about his anti- terrorism policy in a special session next Monday.