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Basque rebels ETA to end Spanish ceasefire
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.
The government says it wants a negotiated solution to the Basque conflict but will only negotiate with ETA if it ends all violent activity.
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Charges dropped for two at Guantanamo
GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba - Judges in the US war crimes tribunals at Guantanamo dropped all charges against the only two captives facing trial, rulings that could preclude trying any of the 380 prisoners any time soon.
The judges said they lacked jurisdiction under the strict definition of those subject to trial under a law the US Congress drafted last year.
The charges did not affect US authority to hold foreign prisoners at the Guantanamo detention and interrogation camp in southeast Cuba.
But it was the latest setback for the Bush administration's efforts to put the Guantanamo detainees through some form of judicial process.
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Nato criticises Putin's aiming missiles at Europe remark
The United States and Nato today criticised President Vladimir Putin's latest attack on a planned US missile shield, but Western reaction was generally muted ahead of a G8 encounter with Putin this week.
The Russian leader warned in an interview released yesterday that Russia would revert to its Cold War stance of aiming missiles at Europe if Washington pursued its plan to site parts of its planned shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Putin acknowledged that such a response risked reviving an arms race in Europe but said Moscow could not be blamed because Washington had started the escalation.
"As far as I am aware, the only country speculating about targeting Europe with missiles is the Russian Federation," NATO spokesman James Appathurai said.
"These kind of comments are unhelpful and unwelcome," he added.
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