Spain seeks to defuse tension with Venezuela over ETA link (Roundup)

Mar 12, 2010, 15:48 GMT

Madrid - Portuguese police have detained a suspected member of the militant Basque separatist group ETA who was trying to fly to Venezuela from Lisbon, police and immigration sources said Friday.

The arrest came less than two weeks after a Spanish judge accused President Hugo Chavez's government of cooperating with ETA and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Andoni Zengotitabengoa, 30, was detained in the Portuguese capital on Thursday while attempting to board a flight to Caracas using a fake Mexican passport.

Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega said Friday that Madrid continued to trust Venezuela's will to cooperate in the fight against ETA.

'We cooperate with all countries - with Portugal, as has been shown, but also with Venezuela,' she said.

Vega said Venezuelan authorities had condemned ETA terrorism and expressed a will to cooperate with the ongoing investigation into the alleged links between FARC and ETA.

Judge Eloy Velasco earlier claimed that ETA and FARC trained together, planned killings of Colombians in Spain and that some ETA members had held government posts in Venezuela.

Velasco charged a total of 13 ETA and FARC suspects, some of whom lived in Venezuela.

Spain then requested 'information' from Caracas, but Chavez dismissed Velasco's allegations as part of a US-led campaign to discredit his country.

Madrid is trying to prevent the case from damaging relations with Venezuela, an important commercial partner, commentators said.

Zengotitabengoa's detention showed that ETA retained some infrastructure in Portugal, a Spanish police source said.

ETA is believed to be seeking new hideouts in Portugal and northern France after coming under increasing police pressure in Spain and in southern France.

Zengotitabengoa is one of two ETA suspects identified as occupants of an ETA base in Obidos north of Lisbon where 1.5 tons of explosives were found by police in February raid.

Zengotitabengoa has already been sentenced in absentia to 13 years in prison for street violence.

Spanish police meanwhile said they and their French counterparts had discovered the body of ETA suspect Jon Anza, 47, whose disappearance in May 2009 prompted ETA to accuse police of having tortured and killed him.

Police sources said Anza had suffered a heart attack in a Toulouse park and died at hospital. Because he carried no identity documents, his body was left at the local morgue until now, when it was finally identified.

About 30 ETA suspects have been detained in Spain, France and Portugal so far this year.

ETA, which has killed more than 820 people since 1968, is listed as a terrorist organization by the European Union and the United States.