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Spain Calls Basque Declaration Insufficient

10 January 2011 17:58 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Spainâ€™s interior minister said on Monday that a cease-fire declaration by the Basque separatist group ETA was not sufficient to guarantee an end to Spainâ€™s four-decade old fight against the nationalist group, APA reports quoting The New York Times.
Alfredo PÃ©rez Rubalcaba, the interior minister, was responding to ETAâ€™s call on Monday for â€œa permanent and general cease-fire which will be verifiable by the international community.â€ The group made its declaration in a statement posted on the Web site of the Basque newspaper Gara. â€œThis is ETAâ€™s firm commitment towards a process to achieve a lasting resolution and towards an end to the armed confrontation.â€
In a brief televised statement, Mr. Rubalcaba said that the government would continue to demand an unconditional surrender. â€œETA continues to pretend that the end of the violence has a price,â€ he said. â€œIf you ask me whether I am more relaxed today than yesterday, honestly I would say yes. If you ask if this is the end, no. Is this what Spanish society expected? Clearly no.â€
In September, the government rejected a similar though less wide-ranging cease-fire declaration because ETA, which the European Union and the United States consider a terrorist organization, had not offered to hand over weapons nor had it described the ceasefire as permanent.
But Mondayâ€™s statement did not mention any surrendering of weapons â€” a key condition placed by the government. The group also said its ceasefire would depend on the advancement of political negotiations on Basque independence. ETA, a nationalist and separatist organization formed in 1959, has killed more than 800 people since starting a campaign in the late 1960s to establish an independent Basque homeland in northern Spain and southwest France.
ETA called a cease-fire in 2006, which it broke off after the collapse of negotiations with the government of JosÃ© Luis RodrÃguez Zapatero.
Still, ETA has not killed on Spanish soil in over a year and has instead found itself under increased pressure from political allies to stop the bloodshed, as well as struggling to maintain any operational structure.
The group has been considerably weakened by stronger cooperation between Spanish and other police forces, particularly in France, with over 30 arrests made last year alone. Last May, for instance, French police arrested Mikel Kabikoitz Karrera Sarobe, the suspected military leader of ETA and his alleged second-in-command near the Spanish border.
Mr. Rubalcaba said that ETAâ€™s latest announcement showed that â€œonce more they have not done what the political parties expected.â€ He added: â€œWe are facing an ETA with an unchanged arrogance, language and script.â€ Mondayâ€™s ceasefire announcement, he said, was therefore â€œnot bad news, but not the newsâ€ the government had hoped for.
Spanish politicians reacted quickly. Marcelino Iglesias, a senior politician from the ruling Socialist Party, called the announcement â€œimportant news that needs to be confirmed with facts and without conditions.â€
But JosÃ© Bono, the head of the Spanish Parliament, said on Spanish television that the cease-fire offer was â€œmore of the same.â€
â€œTo hear talk about political negotiations from people who have killed so many politicians can only produce in me uneasiness and sadness,â€ he said.