POLITICS-SPAIN: Gov’t Announces Peace Talks with ETA

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, Nov 3 1998 (IPS) - The president of the Spanish government, Jose Maria Aznar, announced Tuesday that he would engage in negotiations for peace in Spain’s northern Basque region with the outlawed separatist organisation ETA.

The centre-right leader said he had authorised contacts with people close to ETA to verify the group’s “willingness to lay down arms,” and promised that all future negotiations would be transparent, with timely information made available to the public.

The government thus made public the secret contacts already underway between envoys of the government and ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna – Basque Fatherland and Freedom in the Basque language) with the mediation of third parties. The meetings had repeatedly been denied by both sides.

In May, when the meetings were already taking place, Aznar told a rally in Vitoria – the capital of the Basque Country – that all members of ETA and the HB (the Herri Batasuna coalition, known as ETA’s political arm) “will end up in prison.”

He also criticised the moderate Nationalist Basque Party (PNV), which governs the autonomous region, “for wanting to talk with the murderers now.”

But on Sep. 17, ETA declared a unilateral, unconditional truce. If the group finally agrees to lay down its arms and abandon the use of violence, it will be the culmination of a process that began nearly four decades ago.

In 1959, members of the youth branch of the PNV founded ETA with the aim of fighting the dictatorship (1939-75) of Francisco Franco and struggling for Basque Country independence.

In its first two years of life, ETA only painted walls with the slogan “Gora Euskadi!” (Long Live the Basque Country).

But in July 1961, the group staged its first violent attacks, planting a bomb in a police station in the Basque city of Bilbao and attempting to derail a train.

On Aug. 2, 1968 ETA killed Meliton Manzanas, a police officer accused of being a torturer, in his home in Irun, a town on the border with France.

Manzanas was only the first of a long series of victims of attacks that continued even after the end of the dictatorship and the amnesty decreed in 1977 by the democratic government of Adolfo Suarez, who released all imprisoned members of ETA and allowed the group’s exiles to return to Spain.

The Basque Country’s autonomy also began taking shape during the government of Suarez, with the constitution approved by referendum in 1978.

Today the Basque Country has an autonomous parliament, which names the region’s autonomous government. The government manages public finances, education, tourism, the environment and the region’s own police force.

Several factors had a hand in the declaration of a truce by ETA. One was the success of police efforts against the group since Aznar took office in May 1996.

Another element was the massive rejection of ETA’s use of violence by the people of Spain. Millions took to the streets throughout Spain – in the Basque Country as well – to protest incidents like the 1997 murder of Miguel Angel Blanco, a young town councillor of a Basque city of less than 20,000 residents.

And a third factor was the scant number of Basque citizens who protested when the courts sent all 25 members of HB’s National Board to prison, and when Judge Baltasar Garzon ordered that the daily newspaper Egin – ETA’s mouthpiece – be shut down in September.

ETA’s declaration of a truce and HB’s replacement by Eusko Herratarriak (EH, Basque Citizens), a coalition joined by former HB members who had been expelled from the group when they called for an end to the violence, have led to a new outlook for leftist tendencies in favour of Basque Country independence.

In the Basque Country’s Oct. 25 regional elections, EH capitalised on ETA’s announcement of a truce, taking 50,000 more votes than had been garnered by HB in the previous elections.

Analysts attributed EH’s popularity to its “wager for peace”, which won the support of citizens who shared the coalition’s political aims but rejected the use of violence.

Now that Aznar has announced peace talks, the next logical step, according to analysts, would be a declaration of a permanent truce by ETA. If that occurs, the negotiations will focus on the procedures by which the group would hand over its weapons and rejoin legal society, as well as any possible pardon.

Not everyone was euphoric over Aznar’s announcement, however, which in fact drew fire from the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), which negotiated with ETA in Algiers while in power.

Alberto Belloch, who served as minister of justice and the interior under the socialist government of Felipe Gonzalez (1982- 96), said Tuesday that the PSOE was alarmed that Aznar had held secret meetings with ETA, and that not even the country’s leading opposition party had been informed.

The PNV, however, applauded the measure, which it considered a major step forward on the route to peace.