ETA's surrender opens difficult road to peace

By Sinikka Tarvainen Oct 20, 2011, 22:48 GMT

Madrid - 'I wish this day had come earlier,' a visibly moved Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said Thursday about the historic announcement by the Basque separatist group ETA that it was laying down arms.

The man who led the fight against ETA as interior minister for many years - who is also the candidate of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialist Party and who will succeed him after the November 20 elections - spoke of a 'great victory for democracy.'

It seemed difficult to overestimate the significance of an announcement that appeared set to end a bloody conflict that has plagued Spain for 43 years, claiming about 850 lives.

Not only did ETA say that it was ceasing 'armed activities,' but it affirmed its commitment as 'clear, firm and definitive.'

Zapatero hailed 'the victory of democracy, law and reason,' while conservative opposition leader Mariano Rajoy warned that Spain would only be at peace after ETA dissolved.

Yet despite all the emotion, ETA's announcement had been widely expected.

'We believe it is time to end, and it is possible to end, the last armed confrontation in Europe,' former Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said Monday at a peace conference in the Basque city of San Sebastian. ETA said the meeting played an important role in persuading it to finally make the long-awaited announcement.

The presence of personalities such as Ahern and former United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan helped ETA to present its decision in an international context rather than as a defeat to Spain, analysts said.

In reality, ETA's surrender was widely seen as only a question of time, after relentless police crackdowns had put more than 700 of its members behind bars. With only a few dozen inexperienced gunmen, ETA was barely operational.

It had not killed anyone in Spain since 2009, and declared a 'permanent' ceasefire in January.

Not only had ETA lost the support of the vast majority of Basques, but even its own political wing Batasuna finally turned against its violent tactics.

Signs that ETA was about to give in under pressure had multiplied in recent months, with the vast majority of imprisoned ETA members giving their backing to an older document calling for a purely political strategy in the struggle for Basque independence.

The ETA-linked political organization Ekin meanwhile announced its dissolution, while Batasuna and related groups tightened the screws, launching an unprecedented public call on ETA to renounce violence.

But a peaceful result was not yet guaranteed, conservative politicians and victims' associations said Thursday, pointing out that ETA had not surrendered its weapons.

The San Sebastian conference and ETA called on Spain and France to launch negotiations with the group, but Zapatero did not comment.

An attempt by the government to negotiate with ETA collapsed in 2006 after the group violated its ceasefire with a car bombing that killed two people at Madrid airport.

The current momentum towards peace could be blocked by Spain's intransigeance, Brian Currin, a South African mediator who helped to organize the San Sebastian conference, warned a few weeks earlier.

The key problem was not ETA, but the fact that many Basques were not comfortable with the region's status within Spain, Currin said. About half of the Basques traditionally vote for nationalist parties seeking independence or a wider measure of self-government.

ETA, which is listed as a terrorist organization by the European Union and the United States, campaigns for a Basque state of more than 2 million residents carved out of northern Spain and southern France.

Spain has consistently refused to discuss the option of Basque independence.

The question now is how far Madrid is willing to go in making concessions to radical separatists, whose demands include better living conditions for jailed ETA members and the legalization of banned political parties, analysts said.

'It is necessary to swallow a bit of one's pride, to show a bit of generosity and pragmatism,' Currin told the daily El Pais.

Batasuna and related groups are calling for a reconciliation involving 'all victims,' but such language is rejected by Spanish political leaders.

Associations representing ETA's victims shudder at any comparison between their slain family members and ETA activists killed by the government-sponsored GAL death squads in the 1980s.

The Basque region needs a peace 'without winners or losers,' said Jone Goirizelaia, a lawyer close to Batasuna.

But if Rajoy's People's Party wins the elections as expected, such an approach is thought to have fewer chances of being accepted by Spain.