The Spanish government has still received no letter or communication from the Basque terrorist movement ETA, the Prime Minister, Mr Jose Maria Aznar, said yesterday, although he added that his government remained open to negotiation to bring a lasting peace to the Basque Country. Speaking in Madrid the day after an ETA communique was published in two Basque newspapers, Mr Aznar confirmed that he was ready to resume talks "on the same terms as prior to their unilateral suspension".
ETA's latest demands published on Sunday show a hardening of positions by the separatists with conditions difficult for any democratic government to accept. The conditions include the freeing from jail of all ETA prisoners, the withdrawal of what they describe as "foreign Spanish armed forces from our soil", and recognition of a Basque right to self-determination. They also named the three men to represent them at any future talks. The three are all notorious ETA leaders accused or convicted of long lists of terrorist crimes and all in jail in France or Spain.
Jose Javier Arizkuren, alias "Kantauri", is accused of 15 murders and is considered by the Spanish police to have been the brains behind the aborted plot to assassinate King Juan Carlos in 1995. Jose Antonio Urrutikoetxea, "Josu Ternera", is accused of organising some of ETA's bloodiest attacks, including a Barcelona supermarket bombing which killed 22 civilians. The third is Antton Lopez, alias "Kubati", who shot and killed a former comrade who had renounced violence, as she walked with her young son. Although 13 months have passed without terrorist killings in Spain, talks between government and separatists have made little progress. The last known meeting took place last May on neutral ground in Switzerland, and at the end of July ETA announced that it was calling off contact. Some observers have described last weekend's communique as "pure propaganda, for internal consumption only". They fear that the ETA demand is a form of ultimatum, to justify a resumption of violence when the government rejects, as it almost certainly will, the conditions.
For the past 20 years, the Basque people have enjoyed probably the widest autonomy of any European region. After prolonged negotiations, a Statute of Autonomy, known as the Statute of Gernika, was overwhelmingly approved in a referendum in October 1979, and supported by the moderate Basque Nationalist Party. But last week members of the Basque Nationalist Party, which has worked much more closely with ETA's political supporters since the ceasefire, claimed that the terms of the Gernika Statute had been forced on them by Madrid and called for its renegotiation. Mr Aznar rejected any such suggestion. "How can they question the Statute of Gernika when for the past 20 years they have worked with it and benefited from its terms?" he asked.