By Tito Drago
MADRID, Jan 12 1999 (IPS)

As 1999 gets underway, a sharp chill can be felt in the warm front of peace which spread over the Basque Country and Spain after ETA declared an unconditional and indefinite suspension of military action last September 16.

ETA, the Basque separatist group, has apparently welcomed the new year with a round of fund-raising cards to some 50 entrepreneurs, threatening them with “low intensity violence” – attacks on property and molotov cocktails – if they do not pay up.

And reactions have taken two main forms. The government and Spain-wide parties – including the socialist and communist opposition – whole-heartedly condemn these acts calling for an immediate end to all types of violence.

Meanwhile, the moderate Basque nationalist parties, in charge of the autonomous government of this region, show a certain understanding of the phenomenon, and do not consider it very serious, although they also want an end to the “low intensity violence” and ETA threats to entrepreneurs.

Spain’s head of government, Jose Maria Aznar, of the centre- right People’s Party (PP), stated Monday that citizens have the right to life, and also “to live in peace, free from all kinds of coercion.”

Jose Borrell, presidential candidate of the main opposition force, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), went even further, condemning the violence and also leader of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), Xavier Arzallus, for having played down events classing them as “childish pranks.”

Arzallus Saturday described street demonstrations, accompanied by the burning of PP offices and the throwing of incendiary devices at the security forces, as “infantile, nothing too tragic.”

For the leader of the PNV, the main party of the Basque Country, the important element is that no one was killed. Arzallus said those who used to say “stop killing and we will negotiate” – the PP and the PSOE – are now asking “the petrol kids not to throw any molotov cocktails.”

“They will be demanding (Arnoldo) Otegui (the radical nationalist leader) refrain from casting the evil eye on Carlos Iturgaitz (president of the Basque country PP) next,” he continued.

Otegui justified the violent youth demonstrations, describing as provocative the fact ETA prisoners are held in prisons outside the Basque country.

Demonstrators claim the prisoners’ democratic rights are being infringed and – amongst other elements – want the inmates transferred to detention centres nearer their homes, said Otegui.

One of the entrepreurs who received an ETA threat, Jose Manuel Aizpurua, member of the PP directorate in the Basque province of Guipuzcoa, reported the fact and handed in the letter he received as evidence.

The letter is written in Basque with a summary in Spanish at the end: “As two years have passed since you received the request for economic contribution to ETA, and without even minimal action being taken to satisfy the said debt, we hereby inform you that you and your property are now considered an ETA target.”

“ETA will decide how and when to act” and “only payment of the debt will make this decision reversible,” warned the note.

Demands for the transferral of ETA prisoners to the Basque country were backed by a demonstration by more than 100,000 people in the city of Bilbao Saturday, including leaders of moderate nationalism.

The latter support transferral for humanitarian reasons, also believing it would be a way to consolidate the peace process.

Interior Minister Jaime Mayor Oreja said Monday “the government only wants peace,” but that other sectors are persuing “the same objectives as ever.” He also stated the prisons policy will be maintained until “the peace process truly moves ahead.”

Although Mayor Oreja did not explicitly say as much, his words carried an implicity accusation against nationalists – moderate and radical – of aiming for an independent Basque country.

And Otegui makes no secret of his stance, while the moderates neither reject it nor call for it out loud, but they talk of the right to self-determination and Basque sovereignty.

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