ETA announces a 'permanent, general and internationally verifiable truce'

SPAIN (Agencies) The Basque terrorist group ETA announced on Monday that it was holding a 'cease fire', 'general in character' and 'internationally verifiable'. The announcement was published in Gara, a partisan newspaper published in Basque. The group added that this was a 'firm commitment' with 'a process towards a definitive solution ending in the elimination of armed conflict.' This is hardly the first time such a 'cease fire' has been announced, and is usually done so as a means to rearm and re-plan further murderous activity, so it is not surprising that the Minister of the Interior, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, responded by saying that the announcement was 'not unwelcome, but far from what we would like to hear.'>

The minister's words, though cautious, were simply a response to past announcements in a similar vein. The latest of these was announced on March 22, 2006, and began officially 48 hours later, only to be broken by the gang of criminals on June 5, 2007 - 437 days later - when they blew up the new Terminal 5 at Barajas airport in Madrid, killing two people in the car park.

As is not unusual during these truces, ETA continues to obtain 'support financing' through extortion rackets that severely impact industry and business in the Basque region, something that was not mentioned in  this announcement.

Various political entities have come out with a declarations in response to this latest announcement, many containing similar words to: "The only thing we want to hear from ETA is that they are disolving the organization,  laying down their arms and reject any form of violence now and in the future."

ETA, the acronym that stands for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, in Basque (Patria Vasca y Libertad in Spanish and Basque Nation and Freedom in English), was created in 1959, their first assasination taking place in 1960 when a 22 month old girls was killed in an explosion. There have been 829 deaths attributed to the terrorists so far, and 84 kidnappings. Among their traditional demands is the separation of the Basque region from the rest of Spain, and a portion of France. However, this has been 'modified' over the years. In their latest announcement, they say they seek 'a solution through a democratic process that has the wishes of the Basque people as its maximum reference, with dialogue and negotiation as its instruments.' These words are exactly the same as those used during the 'truce' that ended with the death of the two people at Barajas.

In the opinion of numerous pundits in the Spanish media, ETA's credibility is at an all-low, not least because police operations, and the cooperation of their French counterparts at the Gendarmerie, have decimated the ranks of senior members of the terrorists, many of whom are now in prison or on their way there.

 

ETA victims over the yearsOf the 829 people killed by the terrorist gang, 486 have belonged to the armed or police forces, the remaining 343 were civilians, all too often innocent family members of the forces, or simply caught in the 'cross fire'.

Born out of a student movement called EKIN, which emerged from Bilbao University in 1959 and later merged with the youth movements of political parties such as the PNV (Partido Nacionalista Vasco, Basque Nationalist Party), though it later broke with the latter and other such parties.

Some of the terrorist's activities during the Franco dictatorship were applauded by an otherwise repressed opposition. Perhaps the best known of its activities is that which killed Franco's second-in-command, Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, whose car was blown up when the admiral was on his way back from church in Madrid, in 1973. The car flew over a five story building.

The gang was particularly active in the 1980s, when 'incidents' included placing a bomb that killed 12 Guardia Civil and injured 50 in July, 1986. Just under a year later, in June 1987, they set off a bomb at an Hipercor supermarket in Barcelona, which killed 21 and injured 45. That same year, on December 11, a car bomb went off near the Guardia Civil headquarters in Zaragoza, killing 11, five of whom were girls under the age of 15.

Attempts on Aznar and King Juan CarlosOver the years there have been several attempts on the likes of José María Aznar, then in opposition, and King Juan Carlos, on whom the attempt went wrong just as the King was in the rifle sights of an ETA assasin, this in Majorca when His Majesty was on holiday with his family.

On July 10, 1997, ETA kidnapped a PP councillor, during a campaign that apparently targetted politicians at all levels. After demands for the re-grouping of ETA prisoners to centres in or nearer the Basque country, the gang shot Councillor Miguel Ángel Blanco in the head, two days after making the demand. The entire country held its breath during the two days before that shameful 'execution'.

This last was the worst of the 84 kidnappings. The longest wa that of prison official José Antonio Ortega Lara, which lasted 532 days.