POLITICS-SPAIN: New Basque Alliance Sparks Hopes for Peace

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, Sep 3 1998 (IPS) - A new light began to shine Thursday along the uphill road to peace in the Basque Country, a Spanish region shaken for three decades by bombings, kidnappings and street violence waged by separatist groups.

Fifty personalities of the Basque Country’s leftist separatist movement close to the outlawed Euskadi ta Askatasuna (ETA – ‘Basque Fatherland and Freedom’ in Basque language) presented a broad electoral alliance Thursday in the region’s largest city, Bilbao.

Among the group’s sponsors stand out prominent advocates of independence from Spain who withdrew their support from the armed struggle in search of political understandings with moderate nationalist sectors.

The new alliance, Euskal Herritarrok (EH – Basque Citizens), will run candidates in the Oct. 25 elections for the Autonomous Basque Parliament, which will then designate the region’s head of government.

In practice, EH replaces the Herri Batasuna (HB – Popular Unity) coalition, whose top leaders, the members of the National Board, are in prison on charges of collaboration with armed groups.

HB could be banned within the next few days, as the result of a trial presided over by Judge Baltasar Garzon.

The National Board which replaced the HB leaders in prison meets Friday to decide whether to merge with the new coalition.

The Spanish government interprets the creation of the new group as a maneuver to get round the outlawing of HB.

But EH sponsors refute such arguments. EH spokesman Arnaldo Tumi said Thursday that “the government aims to declare HB illegal, but that is not the basic motive for the creation of EH.” Tumi maintained that the new coalition had arisen due to the “increasing number of people who feel the current political options have been exhausted and want to change the situation.”

Among the best-known personalities who presented the election platform figures Txomin Ziluaga, a long-time HB leader kicked out of the coalition in 1988 because he advocated peaceful means of struggle to obtain independence from Spain.

The new coalition is also comprised of Rafa Diaz, the head of LAB, a trade union with ties to HB and ETA. “We are on the threshold of far-reaching political ventures,” he declared.

The broad array of members of the new coalition, recent declarations by HB spokesman Joseba Permach indicating a more open stance and the contacts with the moderate Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) which currently governs the Basque Country boost the chances of a turn toward peaceful modes of struggle by separatists close to ETA.

Members of the new alliance said the EH platform would include members of HB as well as representatives of other groups, such as Zutik – born of the (Trotskyist) Revolutionary Communist League and the (Maoist) Basque Communist Movement – which stands out for its staunch opposition to the armed struggle.

The Basque Socialist Party is watching the new developments with interest. But one of the party’s leaders, Patxi Lopez, pointed out that ETA and its supporters had not stopped issuing threats, and stressed that “if they want to change, the first thing they have to do is condemn the violence.”

But Spain’s centre-right governing Popular Party is sceptical. The government attributes HB’s change of stance to ETA’s current weakness, which it claims was the result of effective police work.

Interior Minister Jaime Mayor Oreja said the government saw no meaningful changes in HB or its National Board. He predicted that ETA would attempt to stage new attacks as soon as it recovered from the latest blows dealt by the police.