The European Union has included radical Basque nationalist party Batasuna, which is seen as the political wing of armed Basque group ETA, on its list of "terrorist" organisations, diplomats in Brussels have said.
The decision, made at the request of the right-wing Spanish government, will take effect on Thursday when the updated EU blacklist is published during a meeting in Luxembourg of EU interior ministers, they said.
Henceforth all 15 EU states will be obliged to freeze Batasuna's assets, block travel by its activists and prevent it receiving weapons.
Batasuna was banned by the Spanish Supreme Court earlier this year under a controversial new law on political parties and placed on the US 'terrorist' blacklist on May 7th during a visit to Washington by Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, who had been a staunch supporter of the US-led war on Iraq.
The Madrid court's decision to outlaw Batasuna, which regularly gained between 10 and 20 percent of the vote in Basque regional elections, caused outrage in the Basque region because it effectively disenfranchised left-wing nationalist voters ahead of important local elections on May 25.
ETA has been fighting a violent campaign for more than three decades for an independent Basque homeland comprising parts of northern Spain and southern France.
AFP