Spain hails end to ETA violence

Spain is claiming an end to four decades of bombings and shootings after the Basque separatist group ETA announced it would lay down its arms and try to negotiate its demand for a separate nation.

ETA, which has killed more 800 people in its drive for an independent state, stopped short of declaring it was defeated.

But in the historic announcement, the group said it was ending its armed struggle via a video of three ETA members wearing trademark Basque berets and masks with slits for their eyes. At the end of the clip, they defiantly raised their fists in the air demanding a separate Basque nation.

Spain in recent years has repeatedly refused any negotiations, but prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero hailed the ETA concession as a victory for Spanish democracy.

“At this moment, I’m particularly thinking of the Basque society,” Mr Zapatero said, without mentioning any prospects of dialogue with ETA. “I am convinced that from now on it will finally enjoy a coexistence that is not anchored on fear or intimidation. It will be a fully free and peaceful coexistence.”

Relatives of victims killed by ETA insisted that group must disband and tell authorities where its guns and bomb-making material are hidden.

“It is the hoped-for end, but not the desired one,” said Angeles Pedraza. “The victims want the attacks to stop, but we want them to pay for what they have done. We want the total defeat of ETA.”

In Bilbao, the largest city in the northern Basque region, Asuncion Olaeta said she now feels much safer and free to travel to pockets of the region where ETA has had strong support. Her family had received threats from the group after her husband became a politician for Mr Zapatero’s Socialist Party.

“It’s a relief, we are going to be normal citizens again,” she said. “We will be able to go to any place, to have our lives back. We could not go to some places so, from that point of view, it’s a relief.”

The group’s most spectacular attack came in 1973, when ETA planted a bomb on a Madrid street after weeks of tunnelling, and blew up the car of then Prime Minister Luis Carrero Blanco. He was killed in the blast that sent the vehicle into the air and left it as smoky debris atop the roof of a nearby building.

The announcement marks the first time the group has said it was willing to renounce armed struggle, a key demand by from Spain.

It comes as the country prepares for general elections on November 20, and some analysts had predicted it would be made to give the ruling Socialist Party a boost as it faces almost certain defeat amid a national unemployment rate of 21%, the eurozone’s highest.

In its statement, ETA said it had “decided on the definitive end of its armed struggle”. But significantly, the group did not suggest that it would dissolve in an unconditional surrender – as Spain has demanded for decades.

Instead, it said both Spain and France should negotiate with ETA to end the conflict, a demand that Spain has repeatedly said it would not honour.

The ETA statement said talks should address “the resolution of the consequences of the conflict”. This language usually refers to the around 700 ETA prisoners held in Spanish and French jails, and ETA weapons.