ANALYSIS: Arrest of leader deals heavy blow to weakened ETA

May 21, 2008, 12:07 GMT

Madrid - For the Spanish government, the capture of the top leader of the militant Basque separatist group ETA could scarcely have come at a better time.

Francisco Javier Lopez Pena, whom Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba described as having the most political and military weight within ETA, was held in south-western France just as ETA was intensifying its bloody campaign in favour of a sovereign Basque state.

A week earlier, police officer Juan Manuel Pinuel had become ETA's sixth victim since Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's attempt to negotiate with the group had collapsed with a car bombing that killed two people at Madrid airport in December 2006.

Not only were Lopez Pena's tough demands for Basque self- determination regarded as one of the reasons for the failure of the peace process, but he was also believed to have ordered the airport bombing and the main attacks since then, including the car bombing that killed Pinuel.

Lopez Pena wanted to launch a heavy wave of violence in an act of vengeance against the government for refusing to discuss ETA's demand for a Basque Country carved out of northern Spain and southern France, analysts said.

His arrest, along with those of three other important ETA members, dealt a heavy blow to hardliners within the group, which has already been decimated by the arrests of hundreds of its members or collaborators in recent years.

Since the failure of the peace process, Zapatero's Socialist government has launched a renewed police and judicial crackdown on ETA, which has killed about 830 people since 1968, but is now seen as only a shadow of its former self.

Once regarded as a resistance movement against the 1939-75 dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, ETA is now seen by many Basques as a criminal gang that does nothing but harm to the northern region of 2.1 million.

The Spanish government keeps describing ETA's attacks as desperate attempts to display a muscle that the group no longer has, but the fact is that ETA can still spread death and destruction, and remains Spain's main security problem.

Even insignificant bombings cause widespread alarm, and killings spark nationwide silent rallies in a country traumatized by four decades of violence.

Zapatero's attempt to negotiate with ETA was not the first one by Spanish governments, but it nevertheless came under virulent criticism from the conservative opposition, which accused him of 'surrendering' to terrorists.

Zapatero does not intend to talk to ETA again, but most analysts agree that police repression alone is unlikely to end the spiral of bloodshed in the near future.

Even if most Basques oppose ETA's violence, the separatist cause has sympathizers in Basque society, where also the moderate governing Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) would like to stage a referendum on enlarging the region's autonomy to a point near independence.

Before Lopez Pena was captured, ETA leaders had already been detained in some half a dozen police swoops since 1986. Lopez Pena was the most important leader to be caught since the arrest of one of his predecessors, Mikel Albisu, in 2004.

Arrested leaders have soon been replaced by new ones, as jailed lower-level activists have been substituted by young people taken from pro-ETA youth groups that burn buses, hurl petrol bombs at buildings and stage other violent anti-Spanish protests in the restive region.