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Spanish government sceptical of ETA ceasefire (3rd Lead)

Sep 5, 2010, 14:42 GMT

An undated Diario Gara handout released on 05 September 2010 captured from a video sent to the British Broadcasting Corportation (BBC) and the Basque daily \'Gara\' showing Basque Separatists ETA members announcing a ceasefire. EPA/DIARIO GARA /

Madrid - Spain's governing Socialist Party on Sunday rejected a ceasefire announcement made by the militant Basque separatist group ETA as 'clearly insufficient.'

Spaniards only wanted one announcement from ETA: 'that it definitively lays down arms, that it dissolves itself and abandons violence once and for all,' the party's organizational secretary Leire Pajin said.

In the ceasefire declaration read out on a video, ETA did not say whether its truce was permanent or temporary.

For Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, ETA's announcement was 'very little,' government sources told the internet edition of the daily El Mundo.

ETA decided several months ago not to 'carry out offensive armed actions,' the group said on the video quoted by the BBC and the Basque newspaper Gara.

The video showed three masked ETA members. One of them, a woman, read out a communique declaring the ceasefire and saying ETA wanted to launch a 'democratic process' for the Basques to 'freely' decide their future.

ETA's announcement was preceded by the publication Friday of a document in which ETA's political wing, Batasuna, encouraged the group to call a 'permanent' ceasefire under international supervision.

Decimated by police crackdowns, ETA has not carried out significant attacks for more than a year, and police experts had expected the group to call a ceasefire this month.

The government, however, had expressed scepticism over the eventual truce, fearing ETA could use it to rearm as it has done in the past.

ETA has killed more than 820 people since 1968 in its campaign for a sovereign Basque state carved out of northern Spain and southern France.

On the video, ETA said that its armed struggle had created 'new political conditions.'

If Spain was willing, ETA was prepared, 'today as yesterday, to agree on minimum democratic conditions to launch the democratic process,' ETA said, calling on the international community to participate.

Accusing Spain of a 'fascist' campaign to eradicate separatism, ETA called for a 'democratic solution' involving 'dialogue and negotiation' so that Basques could freely decide their future.

The Spanish government, however, refuses to discuss the subject of Basque independence.

ETA's violence is opposed by the vast majority of Basques. The group had come under increasing pressure from its sympathizers to switch from a military to a purely political strategy in the quest for independence.

Batasuna hopes that such a move would persuade Spanish courts to lift a 2003 ban on the party's activities that prevents it from participating in Basque political life.

In the document published Friday, Batasuna proposed a Northern Ireland-style peace process between the government and ETA.

Spanish governments have made several failed attempts to negotiate with ETA, which has declared 11 ceasefires since 1981.

The truce announced Sunday was preceded by a 'permanent' one in 2006. It lasted about nine months before being broken by a car bombing that killed two Ecuadorian immigrants at Madrid's airport in December 2006.

ETA is listed as a terrorist organization by the European Union and the United States.