SPAIN: The Spanish senate yesterday passed a law that will ban Batasuna, the political party of the militant Basque separatist group ETA.
The bill, overwhelmingly approved by a 214 to 15 vote, is "a concrete tool to make illegal and dissolve those parties like Batasuna which belong to terrorist movements," Justice Minister Angel Acebes said.
Three weeks ago the Bill, part of a campaign led by the conservative government of Prime Minister Mr José Maria Aznar to ban parties deemed to be supporting terrorism, was backed overwhelmingly by the lower house of parliament, where Mr Aznar's Popular Party enjoys an absolute majority.
Observers do not expect any of the five veto amendments tabled by Basque nationalist senators and senators from the extreme left to succeed.
The vote comes a few days after ETA claimed responsibility for five bomb attacks on Friday and Saturday, three of which took place in the south during the busy tourist season.
Nine people were injured, one seriously, in explosions that were timed to coincide with a two-day EU summit hosted in the southern city of Seville.
The law will allow Spain's supreme court to ban - at the request of the government or a minimum of 50 members of parliament - any political party whose activity aimed to "deteriorate or destroy the system of freedoms or eliminate the democratic system".
No date has been given for the Bill's publication in the official gazette, a move which will bring it into law.
The Bill, which states that "active or tacit support of terrorism" is a legitimate reason to dissolve a party, is seen as taking direct aim at Batasuna, which won 10 per cent of the vote in last year's regional elections in the Basque region of Spain.
Thousands of Batasuna sympathisers protesting against the law have protested over the past month in the northern cities of Bilbao and Pamplona.
Left-wing and academic critics in Spain have joined them in warning that the legislation threatens to undermine political diversity and the freedom of expression.- (AFP)