SPAIN: ETA May Declare Ceasefire

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, Dec 5 2003 (IPS) - The Basque separatist group ETA in Spain may announce a ceasefire before Christmas, according to Basque trade union sources who said their request to that extent received a ”positive response” from the terrorist organisation.

Labour activists who preferred not to be identified told IPS that two nationalist Basque Country trade unions asked ETA to declare a ceasefire and received an affirmative response, along with the information that the announcement would come before the holidays.

However, no details on the duration of the measure were provided by ETA, which told them the announcement would depend on ”the evolution of events.”

The moderate nationalist ELA union, the largest labour organisation in the Basque Country, and the smaller LAB, which is linked to Batasuna, widely considered to be ETA’s political arm, signed an agreement in late November to jointly defend their labour demands in that northern autonomous community, one of the 17 into which Spain is divided.

After signing the accord, they asked ETA to declare a ceasefire.

ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna – Basque Fatherland and Liberty in the Basque language) was created in the 1960s during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco (1939-1975), but continued to wage an armed campaign in favour of a separate homeland even after the country returned to democracy when Franco died and all ETA prisoners were freed under an amnesty. The group has killed 800 people since 1970.

In the past two years, the French and Spanish police have stepped up their cooperation and joint actions against ETA. Late Thursday, Ibon Fernández Iradi, alias Susper, considered one of the Basque separatist group’s top leaders, was arrested in France.

Fernández Iradi had been captured a year ago in France, but escaped from his cell just a few days later.

After his first arrest, documents that had been seized along with him led to the capture of a large number of ETA members, and to the dismantling of the organisation’s recruitment apparatus.

Police in Spain reported that one result of the latest arrest was the confiscation of ”very important” new documents found in the hideout used by Susper and the two other people who were arrested along with him.

The ETA leader will be extradited and put at the disposal of the Spanish justice system. He is accused of taking part in 18 terrorist attacks, including the murders of socialist politician Juan María Jáuregui, businessman José María Korta, Basque police officer Mikel Uribe and the secretary-general of the Basque Daily, Santiago Oleaga.

He is also accused of preparing the letter-bomb that seriously injured Basque journalist Gorka Landaburu, an activist who fought the Franco regime and who has been an outspoken critic of the terrorist actions perpetrated by ETA since the transition to democracy.

Patxi Zabaleta, a long-time leader of Batasuna who along with other activists left that party and founded Aralar, a group that advocates Basque independence but rejects violence, told IPS that he does not believe ETA plans to declare a ceasefire.

He said he is aware that there is a debate going on within ETA, and admitted that a ceasefire is a possibility. But he also stated that ”a major political development” would have to occur before the group would decide to stop carrying out its attacks.

One of the factors acting against the declaration of a ceasefire, Zabaleta added, is the ”obstructionist attitude” of the centre-right government of Prime Minister José María Aznar.

In his opinion, that stance led the governing Popular Party to become a powerless minority in the northeastern autonomous community of Catalunia, and will lead to the same result in the Basque Country unless it is modified.

But within ETA, it is said that the Basque Country is currently experiencing what Zabaleta described as ”a major political development.”

The latest edition of Zutabe, ETA’s internal bulletin, states that ”Euskal Herria (the Basque Country) is in the midst of a far-reaching political circumstance because a meaningful debate has opened, placing the basic issues of the conflict and the central questions to be resolved by our people at the centre of the political agenda.”

The debate to which the publication referred was triggered by a plan for self-determination presented to the Basque Country parliament by the head of the Basque government, moderate nationalist Juan José Ibarretxe.

But although ETA considers the debate ”meaningful,” it sees the plan submitted by Ibarretxe as narrow and closed, and limited to achieving greater autonomy rather than full independence, according to Zutabe.

The last attempt at negotiating with ETA took place in 1998 and 1999. On Sep. 16, 1998, the group declared a unilateral ceasefire. The group’s leaders and a delegation of the Spanish government then held a meeting in Switzerland. But on Dec. 3, 1999, ETA unexpectedly called off the attempt at peace talks.

All political forces in Spain, including the moderate Basque nationalists, urged the group not to break the ceasefire, and to continue its conversations with the government, in order to negotiate a definitive end to the violence. But ETA rejected that demand by returning to its violent tactics.

Sources with the Basque government consulted by IPS refused to express any opinion on the possibility of a ceasefire, and the Spanish government is standing by the position it took when the last ceasefire was broken: ETA must stop staging violent actions, and must hand in its weapons.

According to the Basque nationalist sources who talked to IPS, Susper’s arrest could make a ceasefire more likely, since the terrorist group would have an even more limited capacity to stage attacks, because Thursday’s arrests are expected to lead to the detention of additional ETA members.

Fernández Iradi’s initial arrest a year ago led to four successful police operations in Spain in which more than 70 people with links to ETA were captured, including 12 on Nov. 18. The arrests arose from information contained in the documents that were seized along with him at that time.