Spain puts election campaign on hold after ETA killing

Both of Spain’s major political parties called off all campaigning in the run up to Sunday’s general election after a politician was shot dead by Basque terrorists today.

Former councillor Isaias Carrasco was shot in the Basque town of Arrasate, near San Sebastian, as he left home with his wife and daughter.

The murder was blamed on the Basque separatist group ETA “Early this afternoon ETA ... murdered Isaias Carrasco,” Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said.

“This is a vile and cowardly act which deserves our total rejection. A vile and cowardly act by a band of murderers who are never going to conquer the will of Spanish democracy.”

Security has been tight in Spain ahead of Sunday’s election over fears of an ETA attack.

A trio of opinion polls this week showed Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero with a 4% lead over conservative candidate Mariano Rajoy.

But opposition conservatives have hammered away at Mr Zapatero for negotiating with ETA, saying he gave the group legitimacy just as it was at its weakest point after years of arrests and that he had betrayed the memory of people killed by the group.

Spain’s last election in 2004 was held just days after a terror attack by Islamic militants on four Madrid commuter trains that killed 191 people and wounded some 1,800. The conservatives in power at the time blamed ETA even as evidence mounted that Islamic militants were involved. Many voters saw the government’s response as a bid to dispel perceptions that Spain’s support of the Iraq war had made the country a target for al Qaida, and the conservatives lost the election.

ETA has killed more than 800 people in its decades-long battle for independence.

The group has set off a series of small bombs in recent months in the Basque country and it killed two Spanish policemen just across the border in France in December.

ETA declared what it called a permanent cease-fire in March 2006 and said it wanted a negotiated settlement to the long-running conflict.

But the group _ classified as a terrorist organisation by Spain, the European Union and the United States _ grew frustrated with a lack of concessions in ensuing peace talks with the Socialist government.

ETA detonated a huge car bomb at a parking building of Madrid airport in December 2006, killing two people. But the group insisted the deaths were unintended and that the cease-fire still held. It formally called off the truce in June 2007, and since then has staged more than a dozen mostly minor bombing attacks.