Basque peace process 'over' after Madrid bombing

Spain’s ruling Socialist party today said a peace process launched with a March ceasefire announcement by armed Basque separatists was now dead, not just suspended, following a weekend car bombing.

“The process is over, because this is what Eta has chosen,” said senior party official Jose Blanco, naming the militant group blamed for the powerful explosion Saturday at Madrid airport that left 26 people injured and two missing and feared dead.

The conservative opposition Popular Party has criticised Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero vehemently for saying after the bombing that he had suspended plans to negotiate with Eta, rather than cancel them altogether.

Even after Blanco spoke, the party said the new gesture fell short. It wants a formal statement from Zapatero himself stating that he is completely ending any peace process with Eta, said Ignacio Astarloa, the party’s top official for security and justice issues.

Astarloa called on Zapatero to “return to reality, with all the harshness that reality has”.

The mayor of Madrid said crews sifting through thousands of tonnes of rubble had reached the core area of the car bombing, but could not go any faster as they searched for two missing men so as not to disturb evidence for investigators.

Alberto Ruiz Gallardon told reporters at the five-storey parking garage destroyed in the blast that work was going at the fastest rate possible as the crews operated with the twin goals of finding two missing Ecuadorian men and locating the van used in the bombing without destroying evidence along the way.

The bombing broke a nine-month ceasefire that armed Basque group Eta had said was permanent.

Eta has not claimed responsibility for the attack, but a caller who warned authorities before the explosion said he represented the group.

Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba is to meet leaders of the rest of Spain’s political parties next Tuesday to discuss the attack and what it means for the now-shattered peace process.

Eta and its political supporters had complained in recent months that the process was stillborn because the government was refusing to make preliminary concessions, such as moving Eta prisoners from jails around Spain to the Basque region itself and halting police arrests and trials of Eta suspects and pro-independence politicians.

Madrid Town Hall has estimated that 40,000 tonnes of rubble will have to be removed from the bombing site at the gleaming new Terminal 4 at Madrid’s airport.

The head of the city’s emergency services department, Alfonso del Alamo, said 18 destroyed cars had been removed from the site and they were unrecognisable as vehicles.

The missing men are believed to have been asleep in separate cars in the car park when the bomb went off.