SPAIN: Hope is beginning to ebb in the face of multiple threats, writes Paddy Woodworth in Bilbao
It's been a bad week for the infant Basque peace process. In the continued absence of any public talks, and an impasse in activity behind the scenes, the widespread optimism which greeted Eta's "permanent ceasefire" last March is evaporating.
A French police report confirmed on Tuesday that Eta is the only suspect in the robbery of hundreds of pistols near Nimes on October 23rd. Incidents of kale borroka ("street struggle") - a euphemism for political vandalism by Eta supporters - are multiplying in the Basque Country. Yesterday a Bilbao newspaper reported that a number of Basque businessmen had received letters extorting money from Eta, albeit worded less threateningly than usual.
Meanwhile, the highly politicised Spanish judiciary is taking a very hard line in Basque-related cases. These mostly involve Eta prisoners, but they include charges against the first minister of the Basque government, Juan José Ibarretxe. He is accused of breaking the law by meeting members of Batasuna, the party alleged to be Eta's political wing, which has been illegal since 2002. Yet it seems clear that no peace process could prosper unless such talks take place.
"The situation is worrying, but there is no cause for despair," Josu Jon Imaz, the president of Ibarretxe's moderate Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) told The Irish Times.
The spokesman for Batasuna, Arnaldo Otegi, said yesterday that he remained "prudently optimistic", but described the situation as one of "constant crisis and blockage", which could lead to "an unpredictable outcome".
If the Irish peace process has been guilty of drinking too often at the Last Chance Saloon, its Basque equivalent is at risk of disintegrating before the participants order the first round, or even agree to meet in the same bar.
The Spanish prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, opened the way to a peace process in May last year, when he offered talks to Eta, strictly conditional on a total end to violence.
The conservative opposition leader, Mariano Rajoy, responded immediately with a blistering attack, accusing Zapatero of "betraying the dead" by considering talks with a terrorist organisation which has killed hundreds of people in pursuit of an independent and socialist Basque Country.
Rajoy's Partido Popular (PP) has since maintained a position of incendiary hostility to any talks with Eta. This is rather puzzling, because representatives of the last PP government met Eta during a rather shakier truce in 1999. Last month, the PP persuaded other EU conservatives, including Fine Gael, to oppose a motion backing Zapatero's peace initiative in the European parliament. They came within a dozen votes of humiliating their own prime minister in Strasbourg.
Lacking the bipartisanship which kept the big British parties singing from the same hymn-sheet during the Irish process, Zapatero risks isolation.
Spanish public opinion is deeply divided. A substantial minority supports the current PP line that even the term "peace process" is inappropriate. They believe that Eta is simply a criminal organisation, unworthy of dialogue with democratic politicians.
Several - though not all - of the powerful associations representing Eta's victims have convened massive demonstrations against any concessions to terrorist prisoners. Spanish nationalism, latent since the Franco dictatorship, is being revived by the PP and fears that a new Basque settlement could lead to the "break-up of Spain" are expressed daily in the conservative media.
Zapatero now seems to be trying to prove he is tougher than the PP. He is refusing to take a step which even the conservatives were willing to take during Eta's 1998-99 truce. This was to reverse the harsh policy of "dispersion", which scatters Eta's prisoners right across Spain, many hundreds of kilometres from their families.
Zapatero could bring the prisoners closer to the Basque Country without changing or violating any law, but he refuses to budge until he has irrefutable evidence that Eta's farewell to arms is irrevocable.
Batasuna argues that it is precisely Eta's frustration at judicial "aggression" which is provoking apparent breaches of the ceasefire.
One high profile Eta prisoner, Iñaki de Juana Chaos, is currently on hunger strike in protest at court rulings which extend his already lengthy incarceration. The possibility of his death casts a long shadow over the process. However, the French arms robbery suggests something more than frustration on Eta's part - it raises serious fears that a new generation which rejects the peace process is taking control and rearming.
There are also signs that the more mature Eta leaders who are currently talking secretly to the government are making increasingly unrealistic political demands.
The best hope for real peace, tenuous but still viable, is that both of these leaders, and Zapatero's government, have a great deal to lose if this initiative collapses. Eta's political support here would drop drastically in the event of a return to violence. And the prime minister's credibility would plummet if his biggest political gamble does not yield positive results.