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MADRID - Basque rebels ETA, who want independence from Spain, will end their ceasefire as of June 6, the armed separatists said in a communique released in Basque newspaper Berria today.
"The minimum conditions for continuing a process of negotiations do not exist," ETA said, adding that the government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero responded to its ceasefire "with arrests, torture and persecution."
ETA declared a ceasefire in March 2006 and had insisted that it still held despite killing two people with a bomb in Madrid airport late in December.
But the latest announcement, which has been widely anticipated by the state security services, could mean another big attack is imminent, Spanish media has reported.
Spain's Socialist government started exploratory peace talks in mid-2006 but broke them off at the end of the year after the airport bomb.
ETA has killed more than 800 people in four decades of armed struggle for independence of the Basque Country, despite the fact that the region already enjoys considerable autonomy within Spain.
The government says it wants a negotiated solution to the Basque conflict but will only negotiate with ETA if it ends all violent activity.
When he first announced peace talks, Zapatero had promised to let the people of the Basque Country decide on the future of their region.
Only a minority of Basques want independence from Spain, according to polls and most analysts had expected that a peace deal would have meant the release of ETA prisoners and slightly more autonomy for the Basque government.
In a series of communiques before its last fatal attack in December, ETA had complained of a lack of progress in the talks with the government and police pressure on its supporters.
Hundreds of arrests in the 1990s in Spain and France seriously weakened the rebels, security services believe.
For decades, ETA sowed terror in Spain with car bombings and assassinations after beginning its struggle in the last days of the Franco dictatorship, when the unique Basque language was suppressed. Nowadays, Basque is officially encouraged.
ETA's banned political party ally Batasuna was not allowed to participate in last month's regional elections.
- REUTERS
