SPAIN: ETA Reloads its Guns

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, Sep 30 1999 (IPS) - Spain’s Interior Ministry warned Thursday of the risk that the Basque separatist organisation ETA could be preparing new attacks, after a year of inactivity.

ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna, or Basque Fatherland and Liberty) declared a unilateral truce on Sep 16, 1998. Since then, the group has not staged any violent attacks, and ETA leaders have met representatives of the government, although no agreement has been reached.

On Thursday, police in France arrested three known members of ETA in the town of Pau, near the Spanish border, and recovered part of the eight tonnes of explosives stolen in the northwestern region of Brittany Tuesday.

The detainees are Jon Biénzobas, alias “Karaka”, who faces charges in Spain in connection with the Feb 14, 1996 murder of university professor Francisco Tomás y Valiente; Patricio Segurola, allegedly responsible for the Jan 23, 1995 murder of Gregorio Ordóñez, town councillor of the governing People’s Party (PP) in the Basque city of San Sebastián; and María Angeles Perurena.

The three suspects were carrying weapons at the time of their arrest, and were put at the disposal of the courts in France.

The theft of explosives in Brittany coincided with the worst rash of violent incidents in the past year in Spain’s Basque country and the neighbouring region of Navarra, perpetrated by young ETA supporters.

According to the Interior Ministry, five percent of all incidents registered in the last year have taken place in the past three days alone.

Six hooded individuals set a bus alight Wednesday in Bilbao, the Basque country’s largest city, and a bomb exploded in the headquarters of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) while another was defused under a police officer’s car in Abadiño.

In the town of Noain in the neighbouring province of Navarra, a woman was injured when a bomb went off in the residence of a city councillor of the centrist Union of the Navarran People party.

Radical Basque nationalist supporters of ETA blame the situation on the government, which they accuse of blocking progress towards a definitive end to the violence.

Xabier Arzallus, the leader of the moderate Nationalist Basque Party (PNV), which currently governs the Basque country, denied that the theft of explosives and arrest of three ETA members constituted a rupture of the ceasefire.

Another PNV member, the party’s spokesman in the Spanish parliament, Joseba Egibar, said he saw the robbery as a message from ETA stating “here we are,” now we have an arsenal, “but without the intention of immediate action.”

Joaquín Almunia, secretary-general of the PSOE, Spain’s leading opposition force, condemned ETA, which in his view “is not on standstill, but trying to stay on the active list.”

The government, meanwhile, is remaining alert. Interior Minister Jaime Mayor Oreja said he believed that “ETA has not yet taken the big decision to put a definitive end to the violence, and is actually far from comprehending the peace process” in the Basque country.

Mayor Oreja, whose political career began in the Basque country, his home region, said that through their recent activity, the members of ETA “are telling us that if we do not heed (their demand for) political negotiations, they are lying in wait, and that if progress is not made in the process of national construction, they are still there.”

The big difference is that the government is willing to negotiate ETA’s laying down of arms and a pardon for imprisoned and exiled members of the group, while ETA is demanding a political dialogue.

ETA, with the indirect support of the PNV, wants to negotiate the Basque country’s right to self-determination and independence.

But the Spanish government maintains that like all other citizens of Spain, the residents of the Basque country must discuss politics through their elected representatives, and not under threats of violence.

The Herri Batasuna and Euskadi Herritarrok coalitions, both of which are supported by ETA, participate freely in elections, and coalition members are city councillors, parliamentary deputies and mayors.

Moreover, Euskera (Basque) and Spanish are the two official languages of the Basque country, education is bilingual, and those in favour of independence have the same right as everyone else to express and organise themselves and take action – “except through violence,” stressed Mayor Oreja.