By IPS Correspondents
MADRID, May 30 2003 (IPS)

The Spanish government and opposition parties agree that only legal measures should be used in combating the Basque terrorist group ETA, which carried out another attack Friday, detonating a bomb that killed two police officers in the northern community of Navarra.

A bomb placed under the police vehicle exploded just as the two agents were leaving their workplace in Sangüesa, a town of just over 4,000 people. They were accompanied by a third colleague who was gravely injured in the blast.

The first vice-president of the Spanish government, Mariano Rajoy, and the leader of the opposition Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, spoke out against the attack, saying ETA must be fought relentlessly, but always within the law.

Judge Baltasar Garzón, internationally renowned for his work on high profile human rights cases, also condemned the ETA bombing. He learned of the incident, coincidentally, just as he was presenting the new book "Lobo", by journalists Antonio Rubio and Manuel Cerdán, a fictionalised history of an agent who infiltrated the radical separatist group’s ranks in the 1970s.

In the book, and as "Lobo" himself confirmed in the presentation, is the story of how the infiltrator "and other agents and police" carried out illegal actions against the Basque terrorist group.

"Lobo", whose real name is Miquel Legarza, appeared at the book release wearing dark glasses, a wig and a false beard.

Garzón said that today, "fortunately, these illegal actions no long occur, and if they did they would be crimes that should be brought before the justice authorities."

Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA, Basque Fatherland and Liberty, in the Basque language) was founded in the 1960s to fight the Spanish dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco (1939-1975).

ETA, which shifted its opposition to the military regime towards separatist demands, is known for its terrorist tactics, including car bombs and assassinations, which are blamed for the deaths of more than 800 people over the past three decades.

The two police killed by ETA and their injured colleague were part of a team that was working to facilitate the renewal of identification documents in the rural communities of Navarra, one of the 17 autonomous communities that make up Spain.

The citizens of Navarra voted in a 1979 referendum against forming part of the Basque Country, counter to what the region’s nationalist movement seeks.

In regards to this matter, PSOE leader Rodríguez Zapatero said in a conversation with IPS on Friday, "Five days ago the Navarrans and all good Spaniards expressed themselves with their votes (in local and regional elections). Today ETA has expressed itself with its own language: that of death."

Miguel Sanz, president of Navarra, noted that the explosion occurred in a busy plaza, and therefore "the police would have thought it would be practically impossible (for ETA) to place a bomb during broad daylight… but they have done it."

Among the people on the street at the time of the explosion, others who were injured – a man, two women and an eight-year-old boy – but not seriously.

The mayor of Sangüesa, some 45 km from Pamplona, capital of Navarra, is independent politician José Daniel Plano. He has no links to any of the major parties and was re-elected to the post last Sunday.

Friday’s bomb attack is the ETA’s second so far this year. On Feb. 8, they killed Joseba Pagazaurtundúa, a socialist and policeman from Andoain, a small town in Basque Country.

In denouncing this latest ETA attack, the political leaders were joined by the Union Confederation of Workers’ Commissions (of communist leanings), which expressed its "resounding condemnation and rejection of the terrorist action."

The Confederation further called on workers and all society "to participate in any demonstrations and acts of protest and denunciation that are staged against this latest act of barbarism and terror."

The Chambers of Commerce and Industry followed suit, and issued a statement saying, "ETA is fenced in, legally isolated, economically asphyxiated and for the first time politically excluded from elections."

"The only way to fight terrorism is through the unity of all democratic parties and strict compliance with the law," said the communiqué.

Also citing the debilitated state of ETA was "Lobo", who took the stage at the book presentation after Garzón, the judge who became famous for his effort to have former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet extradited to Spain for trial on charges of crimes against humanity.

"Lobo" said Friday, "ETA is Swiss cheese, an organisation full of holes, with as many militants as infiltrators. It is a poorly trained mafia. Its end is near."

Speaking after "Lobo" was Mario Onaindía, who read an anti- terrorism message. Onaindía, today a socialist senator, served prison time for being a member of ETA during the final years of the Franco dictatorship. After the return to democracy and after being pardoned in 1976, he publicly renounced violence.

In the early years of Spain’s democratic consolidation, several members of the ETA political-militant sector followed in Onaindía’s footsteps and joined legal political parties or withdrew from political activity altogether.

Now there are fewer and fewer militants who have remained with ETA through the years, and increasingly more who joined later and are dedicated to committing indiscriminate acts of violence against Spain’s security forces, politicians and party activists, local officials, academics and journalists.

ETA’s primary demand is for independence. The Autonomous Communities of Spain, which include the Basque Country, have a level of autonomy from the central Spanish government that is surpassed only by that of the federated provinces of Canada.

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