Political wing of ETA plans end to armed conflict: Report

A leading member of the political wing of Basque separatist group ETA laid out plans for the militants to lay down their arms and begin to work towards peace in a newspaper interview on Sunday.

Rufi Etxeberria, a long-standing member of ETA's political movement, said the proposal was negotiated with other members in recent weeks and the time was right to achieve change.         

"This process has to be done without any violence, which means without any armed activity by ETA," he said in an interview with Basque newspaper Berria. 

The Spanish government is likely to greet the proposal with caution as it has said it will not negotiate with ETA after peace talks broke down in 2006, when the group carried out a bomb attack at Madrid's Barajas airport.                                           

Commentators in Spanish media saw it as a move to see ETA-linked parties legalised. Herri Batasuna, the main political party linked to ETA, was banned in 2003.

Etxeberria was released from prison last September and has served several prison sentences for his involvement with Batasuna among other charges in the last decade. He said the group could not wait for the government's stance to change.        

"It's essential that the political and social groups that support this take a new path together. Without that the Spanish state is not going to change its attitude," he said.

In the last significant armed conflict in Western Europe, ETA has been fighting for four decades to carve out an independent Basque region straddling northern Spain and southern France, killing about 850 policemen, officials and other people. 

But with the Basque country winning considerable autonomy since the end of the Franco dictatorship, political nationalism had faded.

Last year Basque voters elected Patxi Lopez as the region's first socialist leader, working alongside the country's main conservative Popular Party. Before that the main Nationalist party had always had control.                                           

At the same time as ETA's military strength has waned. Several suspected ETA members have been arrested in recent months and several bases used to store explosive materials found in Spain, France and Portugal.                                          

Spain's interior minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said last week the three countries were working closely together to tackle ETA and would meet on Feb. 23 to sign an agreement aimed at closer police coordination.