Eta claims airport bomb but says ceasefire holds

The Basque separatist group Eta today claimed responsibility for a powerful car bombing that killed two people, but insisted a “permanent” ceasefire it called in March remained in force and said the fatalities were unintentional.

In a statement sent to the pro-independence newspaper Gara, Eta blamed the Spanish government for hindering a peace process launched with the Eta truce announcement and said Eta reserved the right to respond if the government keeps up “aggression” against the pro-independence movement.

The bombing on December 30 destroyed a five-storey car park at Madrid international airport, killed two men sleeping in parked cars and injured 26 people.

The bombing also shattered a nine-month Eta ceasefire that Europe’s last armed political militancy had called permanent.

The blast stunned the government, which had said it was willing to negotiate with Eta. Only a day before the explosion it had expressed optimism about the peace process.

The bombing also caught Eta’s political wing Batasuna off guard, suggesting a rift between the two camps.

Eta said it had not meant to cause casualties in the attack, accusing the government of failing to evacuate the car park despite three warning calls pointing out exactly where the vehicle containing the bomb was parked.

The garage and nearby areas were evacuated, but both victims were sleeping in parked cars.

Eta blamed the Spanish government and the governing Socialist party for “placing obstacles endlessly in the democratic process”, Gara said in a summary of what it called a long Basque-language statement.

Hours before Eta’s statement, the government announced the arrest of two suspected Eta members in southern France linked to arms caches found in late December and last week in the Basque region. They were the first arrests since the Madrid car bombing.

Eta and its political supporters had been warning in recent months that continued arrests and trials of suspected Eta members were endangering the peace process, which was launched with its ceasefire announcement on March 22.

It had also been demanding – and the government refusing – the transfer of Eta prisoners from jails around Spain to prisons in the Basque region.

Spain’s government has responded to the bombing by scrapping plans for negotiations with Eta and declaring the once-promising peace process terminated.

Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said he had not immediately read Eta’s statement, but his initial impression was that “Eta has only one path left to take, which is to end the violence”.

Asked when the government might again take up the idea of negotiating with Eta, he said: “I cannot conceive of that dialogue resuming.”

In its statement, Eta reiterated a claim that the government had made – but was not keeping – unspecified promises as part of the process that began with the truce.

The group wants to promote the peace process, but reserves the right to “respond” if what it calls government aggression against the pro-independence movement continues, Gara said.

Eta insisted progress in the peace process must come from a “political agreement” that includes “the minimum democratic rights owed to the Basque country” – an apparent reference to Basques’ long-standing demands to be able to decide between independence and remaining part of Spain.

It called on the government to halt “police formulas and failed policies that lead nowhere”, said Gara, which did not publish a full text of the Eta statement.

Eta has killed more than 800 people since the 1960s in its quest for an independent Basque homeland.