Zapatero warns Eta as truce ends

Zapatero warns Eta as truce ends
By Leslie Crawford in Madrid
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: June 6 2007 03:00 | Last updated: June 6 2007 03:00


Spain was braced yesterday for renewed terrorist violence after Eta, the outlawed Basque group, called off a 15-month truce and said it would resume fighting for an independent state.

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the prime minister who had sought peace talks with Eta since his election in 2004, said the group could expect the full force of the law. "Once again, Eta is taking the wrong course," he said. "Its decision . . . goes against the wishes of Basque and Spanish societies."

Mr Zapatero, who wanted a Northern Ireland-style accord, yesterday tacitly admitted defeat. He had done "all that is within my power to achieve peace and to create a framework of universal coexistence". Now it was over.

Eta's statement dashed hopes for an end to a conflict that has claimed more than 800 victims since the 1960s.

Spain's Socialist government considered the ceasefire broken in December, when Eta set off a car bomb at Madrid's Barajas airport that killed two people. Eta insisted that the truce held.

Madrid called off the peace process but indicated it could resume if Eta showed it was renouncing violence. The sign never came.

The opposition Popular party, meanwhile, refused to back Mr Zapatero's peace overtures. Analysts said the division among the democratic parties had weakened the government's hand.

Although Mr Zapatero appealed for unity, it was not clear if the development would bring the two main parties closer together. Mariano Rajoy, leader of the Popular party, said he was still unsure where the prime minister stood on talks with Eta.

Mr Rajoy called on Mr Zapatero to declare there would be no further contacts with Eta. The end of negotiations, however, will also deprive Mr Rajoy of a powerful issue with which to attack the government.

The end of the ceasefire comes 10 days after local elections in which Eta sympathisers gained control of 17 town halls in the three Basque provinces. Groups that support Eta do better at the polls when Eta is not killing. Even so, its support has been halved since Eta's last truce, in 1998-99.

Mr Zapatero sought peace talks with Eta soon after coming to power. Four days before the March 2004 general election, Islamist terrorists killed 191 people in the Madrid rail bombings. The new government was keen to put an end to Eta violence so it could deal with the more serious Islamist threat.

Eta announced a "permanent ceasefire" in March 2006. Government and Eta representatives held exploratory contacts last year. After the Barajas attack, the government put the peace plan on hold.

In the run-up to the May elections, judges struck off dozens of electoral lists deemed to be surrogates for Batasuna, a political party that was banned in 2002 because of its links to Eta.

However, they could not proscribe the pro-independence Acción Nacionalista Vasca because its candidates had no proven links to Eta. ANV polled 73,344 votes, 7.4 per cent of the total, in the three Basque provinces.