Blasts in Basque blamed on ETA

MADRID - Four small bombs exploded at businesses in the troubled Basque region of northern Spain on Sunday, police said, soon after the government proposed talks with Basque separatist group ETA if it gives up violence.

Two policemen and a security guard were taken to hospital with breathing difficulties after one bomb damaged a deposit of acid, Basque police said in a statement.

Police said ETA, which has killed hundreds of people in a decades-long campaign for Basque independence, was believed to be responsible for the bombs, which blew up in the early hours at businesses in four Basque towns.

Such tactics are typical of the armed group's attempts to extort money from Basque businesses as "Revolutionary Tax".

The bombs -- the first attacks blamed on ETA in several months -- were made of about 1.5kg of explosive and were set off with timers, Basque police said.

They damaged buildings and, in one case, shattered windows in nearby flats.

The bombs threaten to undermine the ruling Socialist Party's drive to win parliamentary support for a proposal to start talks with ETA if it gives up violence.

The unprecedented proposal, submitted late on Friday, prompted an outcry by the centre-right opposition Popular Party, which is firmly opposed to any concession to ETA.

Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso condemned Sunday's attacks and said they would not change the government's policy of "absolute firmness" against violence.

"The security forces will go on using all the means at their disposal, within the limits of the law, until ETA definitively disappears," he said in a statement.

ETA, classed as a terrorist group by the European Union, has killed more than 800 people since 1968 in a campaign for an independent Basque state carved from northern Spain and southwest France. But it has been weakened by hundreds of arrests in recent years in both France and Spain.

The Socialists' proposal for talks comes amid widespread speculation that ETA could announce a truce, and follows comments by Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero that he will make every effort to bring peace to the Basque Country.

Zapatero's Socialist Party was due to start consultations on Sunday on reaching a consensus on its proposal for talks before a parliamentary vote on Tuesday.

The motion is expected to win support from the government's parliamentary allies in small regional and leftist parties.

A poll published by El Pais newspaper on Saturday showed a majority of Spaniards favoured starting talks with ETA if it abandons its arms.

ETA's last attack was on February 27, when a small bomb exploded outside a holiday residence used by bank employees. Earlier in February, 43 people were wounded when a car bomb exploded near Madrid's main convention centre.

No one has been killed in an ETA attack for two years and political allies in banned separatist party Batasuna have called for political negotiations and an end to violence.

ETA last called a full ceasefire in September 1998, but rescinded it 15 months later.

- REUTERS