SPAIN: Spain is to ask the French, Belgian and Nicaraguan authorities to close down offices of Batasuna, the party allied to the Basque terrorist movement ETA.
The decision comes three days after Mr Baltasar Garzon, an examining judge, ordered the closure of Batasuna offices, meeting places and bank accounts in the Basque Country and Navarra.
Over 25 offices have been closed. In some places police were able to carry out their orders without interference but were subjected to violence in others.
Batasuna has representative offices in Managua, Nicaragua, in Bayonne, France, and what it describes as a herri enbaxada (people's embassy) in Brussels in a property it purchased in 1989 for €171,000.
Police found evidence that this office was being used by ETA when they arrested a known terrorist leader, Jose Ignacio Herran Bilbao, in Paris in 1999.
Only hours after Basque police closed down offices in Vitoria, San Sebastian and Bilbao, members of Batasuna boasted that they were going to carry on their operations from Bayonne, less than 30 kms from the Spanish border.
When police raided some of the offices they found that Batasuna militants had already removed furniture, computers and files from the premises.
Orders to close down the Batasuna website is causing more problems, The site - www.Batasuna.org - is registered in the US but operates from an Australian address. Mr Garzon, however, has vowed to take all possible measures to block the website and clamp down on the party.
In parallel measures against Batasuna, the Spanish cabinet met yesterday for the first time after the two-month summer recess. The main item on the agenda was the request to the attorney general to ask that the Supreme Court move to make the Basque party illegal.
This decision was agreed on Monday in an emergency session of the lower house of the Cortes (parliament), when almost 90 percent of the deputies voted in favour. As soon as the Supreme Court receives the request and informs Batasuna, the party will have eight days to appeal against the move before the 16 judges begin their hearings.