Spanish PM eager to start talks with ETA
Yesterday marked the first day of the ceasefire by the group blamed for more than 800 deaths and €12.9 billion in damage since the 1960s in its fight for an independent homeland.
Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said the government will now seek to verify whether the ceasefire is sincere and accompanied by an end to other ETA tactics, such as extortion of business leaders and low-level street violence. Both continued during ETA's last truce, in 1998-99.
Speaking after a European Union summit in Brussels, Mr Zapatero said he would live up to a pledge he made in May 2005 when he offered ETA talks if it renounced violence.
He promised then that if ETA met conditions of total non-violence, he would go before parliament seeking its support for opening peace talks.
"If the verification conditions I have just explained are met, the government will go before parliament before the summer," Mr Zapatero said.
It was his first public indication of how quickly he might move toward negotiations following ETA's announcement Wednesday.
Mr Zapatero also said the governments of Britain and Ireland with their experience with the IRA had offered to help Spain as it stands on the verge of a historic chance for peace.
Spaniards enjoyed their first day of what the violent Basque separatist group ETA calls a permanent ceasefire, with a poll yesterday showing most wanted the government to explore peace talks and conservatives expressing wariness of political concessions.
Opposition leader Mariano Rajoy greeted the ETA ceasefire news sceptically, calling it a "pause" in ETA violence, rather than a definitive end. He said Thursday he believed ETA had not renounced its goal of self-determination for the Basque region.
Streets around Spain were quiet, with no celebrations reported, despite the historic nature of the cessation of violence.
ETA has not staged a fatal attack since May 2003.
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