The Basque separatist organisation ETA last night confirmed reports that it was calling an openended truce, beginning tomorrow according to a communique issued to the Basque radical newspaper Euskadi Informacion. The truce is part of a strategy, closely modelled on the Irish peace process, to resolve the Basque conflict.
ETA has never before called an unlimited truce during its 30 year violent campaign in pursuit of an independent Basque Country, which has cost more than 800 lives.
Euskadi Ta Askatuta (Basque Homeland and Liberty) was founded in 1959 by students frustrated by the failure of the Basque Nationalist Party to organise effective resistance to Franco's dictatorship and repression of Basque national identity. The group was committed to a totally independent Basque Country, taking in four Spanish and three French provinces on either side of the northeastern Pyrenees.
Though it considered the use of violence legitimate from its foundation, ETA did not claim its first victim, a guardia civil, until the summer of 1968. The ETA member who carried out the killing was himself shot by the security forces only days later, setting up a cycle of martyrdom and "action-repression-action" which has lasted through 20 years of Spanish democracy.
As Spain moved towards democratic reform, numerous ETA militants left to form democratic political parties, but the hard-core "military wing" actually escalated its campaign of terror as democracy brought a large degree of selfrule to the Basque Country.
The IRA ceasefire left the group as the last potent exponents of nationalist terrorism in Europe. The group had suffered many reverses in recent years, including the imprisonment of the entire central committee of its political wing, Herri Batasuna, for collaboration with terrorism last December. Early this summer, a newspaper accused of being a mouthpiece for the group was closed down.
The organisation briefly seemed to be overwhelmed by the huge public reaction to the killing of a conservative party councillor, Miguel Angel Blanco, in July 1998. But opinion polls showed that its political wing continued to enjoy up to 15 per cent of the Basque vote, though the campaign of killing local councillors continued until three months ago.
Expectations that ETA was about to call a long-term ceasefire had been heightened earlier yesterday, with a statement from the president of the region's autonomous government, Mr Jose Antonio Ardanza, that "the Basque Country is on the threshold of peace."
The possibility of an imminent ceasefire was raised at the weekend, after moderate and radical nationalists produced proposals very closely based on the Irish peace process.
The conservative Spanish government and the Socialist opposition have both sharply rejected the new nationalist proposals, describing them as a capitulation to terrorism and an electoral manoeuvre by the moderate nationalists.
Elections to the Basque parliament take place next month, and the signatories of the peace proposal currently control 47 of 75 seats between them. A ceasefire will presumably enable the moderate nationalists to form a government with the radicals. They are likely to pursue a programme for self-determination, and possibly even independence, for the Basque Country, a prospect which is anathema to Madrid.
Both the Spanish government and the Socialist opposition have also expressed deep scepticism about the seriousness of any ETA ceasefire. The Interior Minister, Mr Jaime Mayor Oreja, warned yesterday, before the announcement was made, that any truce offer was likely to be "a trick". There also appear to be deep divisions within ETA itself about a permanent ceasefire. The path to a full resolution of the conflict remains long and difficult.
Spanish sides are divided on Irish peace model as their way for- ward: page 16