ETA ceasefire greeted with scepticism

The armed Basque separatist group ETA, under pressure from political allies to renounce violence and weakened by the arrests of its leaders, has announced another ceasefire, suggesting it might turn to a political process in its quest for an independent homeland.

But the Basque regional Government immediately dismissed yesterday's announcement as meaningless, because ETA failed to renounce violence or announce its dissolution.

"It's absolutely insufficient because it does not take into account what the vast majority of Basque society demands and requires from ETA, which is that it definitively abandon terrorist activity," Basque regional Interior Minister Rodolfo Ares said in the first official comment on the announcement.

Spaniards also expressed scepticism, saying they had seen ETA ceasefires come and go before.

"We give them very little credibility," said Angeles Pedraza, president of the Association of Victims of Terrorism.

"Actually, we give them none at all. We are already used to this,"

The new pledge from ETA, which has been fighting for an independent homeland in parts of northern Spain and southwestern France since the late 1960s, left several key questions unanswered.

Besides silence on whether it will surrender its weapons, it did not say if the truce was open-ended and permanent, like one declared in 2006, or whether it would halt other activities, such as extorting money from business leaders or recruiting members. Nor was there any mention of whether the ceasefire could be monitored by international observers as called for on Saturday by two Basque parties that back independence: ETA's outlawed political wing Batasuna and a more moderate pro-independence party called Eusko Alkartasuna.

Since late last year, divisions have been emerging and widening between ETA and the political parties that support it. Jailed ETA veterans have also been distancing themselves from the group, and enhanced French police co-operation has proved crucial in recent years in a neighbouring country that used to serve as a haven for ETA.

And Saturday's statement by those two parties was significant in that it marked the first time they had put down in writing that they wanted ETA to work toward independence through peaceful means, rather than with violence.

ETA's announcement was not a surprise in Spain - in recent months, many people in the Basque region had been expecting a ceasefire. Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba had said as recently as Saturday that he was expecting a ceasefire statement from ETA.

The announcement came in a video sent to the BBC and a statement published by the newspaper Gara, a pro-independence daily that often serves as a mouthpiece for ETA.

- AP

A HISTORY OF BROKEN PLEDGES

1959: Euzkadi Ta Askatasuna (Fatherland and Freedom) or ETA is founded by Basque students in response to dictator Francisco Franco's oppression.
1973: Prime Minister Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco assassinated.
1980: ETA escalates bombing, killing 118 people in the year.
1987: 21 people killed in a bomb attack on a Barcelona supermarket.
1998: ETA declares its first "indefinite" ceasefire.
2000: ETA detonates car bombs in Madrid and Vittoria.
2001: Politicians and the Spanish establishment are targeted. Among those killed are Judge Jose Maria Lidon and politicians Manuel Jimenez Abad and Froilan Elexpe. A car bomb in Madrid injures almost 100 people. The EU declares ETA a terrorist organisation.
2004: Mikel Albizu, one of ETA's most influential figures, arrested.
2006: ETA declares a new permanent ceasefire, but a deadly bomb attack at Madrid airport, in which two are killed prompts the Spanish Government to announce the peace process as "broken, liquidated and finished".
2007: ETA announces formal end to ceasefire. Leadership of Batasuna, ETA's political wing, arrested.
2008: ETA's most senior commander, Javier Lopez Pena, and its military chief Garikoitz Aspiazu Rubina, alias Txeroki, arrested in France.
2009: French police capture two senior figures in ETA's military leadership: Jurdan Martitegi, and Aitzol Irionda.
February 2010: Senior ETA commander Ibon Gogeascotxea is arrested in France.

- INDEPENDENT