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BILBAO, Spain - The Basque separatist group ETA has said it stands by a permanent cease-fire declared in March despite claiming responsibility for a car bomb that killed two people at Madrid airport on New Year weekend.
The group blamed the government for the breakdown in the peace process and said it did not mean to kill anyone in the blast that destroyed a five storey car park at Madrid's Terminal 4 on December 30 - its first fatal attack since May 2003.
Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba rejected that explanation.
"When someone places a powerful bomb in an airport terminal on December 30, they have to be aware of their actions ... it's evident that the risk of victims is enormous," he told reporters.
Since the bomb, the Spanish government has called off a peace process which many hoped would end ETA's violent four-decade campaign for independence in the Basque Country, an area that stretches across the French-Spanish border.
"ETA affirms that the permanent cease-fire started on March 24, 2006, still stands. It claims responsibility for the attack at Barajas (airport)," ETA said in a note to Gara newspaper, the way the group usually makes its statements.
ETA blamed the Socialist government for "continually creating obstacles to the peace process" and accused the Basque nationalist regional government of siding with Madrid.
It also said Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's team had not kept its commitments and called on them to scrap police and political pressure.
"It seems enormously sarcastic that now ETA is taking the Spanish government to task for its barbarities," Rubalcaba said. He declined to comment more fully on the statement.
In their statement, the guerrillas threatened to "respond" if the government kept up its "attacks".
ETA said it gave clear warnings about the airport attack with three phone calls giving the exact location of the bomb.
"The aim of that armed action was not to cause victims," it said. The two men killed were asleep in their cars when the bomb exploded, injuring 19 others.
Rubalcaba said ETA had only one option - to end violence.
Before the statement, Rubalcaba was quoted in an interview with The New York Times saying that there would "never again be a credible truce with ETA" because the group had gone back on its word by breaking the cease-fire without formal warning.
On Monday, Batasuna, a political party banned for its links to ETA, called on the guerrillas to keep the cease-fire.
Since the Madrid airport attack, police in the Basque Country have found stashes of 180 kg of explosives including parts that could be used for limpet bombs, which ETA has typically used to blow up cars.
Earlier on Tuesday, police arrested two suspected ETA members in southern France, the first arrests since the airport bombing. It was not immediately clear if the arrests were linked to the December 30 attack.
- REUTERS
