ETA Declares End to Cease Fire
The Armed Struggle Returns from Midnight Tonight
One year later and the negotiations are over. ETA declares a return to the struggle, whilst the President laments and the opposition calls for an early election in Spain.
Midnight 6th June.
As of midnight, June 6th 2007 the terrorist organisation ETA will end their year long cease fire. Reactions have been mixed: The President of Spain - José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero - is clearly disappointed whilst the conservative opposition party is renewing their demand for the defeat of the terrorist group and the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki Moon, is calling on ETA to maintain its cease fire.
ETA has stated that the peace negotiations failed to end either the arrests and torture of their members, or the persecutions of the Basque people. They have no choice, they claim, but to end the cease fire and return to their role as defenders of the people of Euskai Herria (the Basque region). ETA also accuses the National Basque Party of acting for profit above politics and calls for the municipal elections last month, in which a number of their candidates were banned from participating, to be considered as illegitimate. These candidates were judged to be members of Batasuna, the illegal political front for ETA, and hence not allowed to stand.
Curiously, the spokesperson for Batasuna, Arnaldo Ortegi, whilst obviously pointing the finger of blame at the Spanish Government and the National Basque Party, has emphasised that although the truce may be over, it had only ever been part of a more wider peace process and as such he intends to continue working towards a negotiated peace settlement.
Madrid Bombings.
It has now been five months since the bomb attack on Madrid airport in which two civilians lost their lives. ETA released a communication afterwards in which they stated that their intention had not been to cause a loss of life - they had given warnings of the explosions in advance - and that they wished to continue with the move towards finding a peace settlement.
Despite immediate calls from the opposition party in Spain - Partido Popular (PP) - to end all negotiations, the peace process had stumbled covertly onwards until this declaration by ETA today. The PP has now called on President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, to confirm that he will not return under any circumstances to negotiations with ETA. Furthermore PP calls on Zapatero to agree that ETA be defeated by the forces of the state without the need for shortcuts or negotiations. Only when ETA is destroyed, they claim, will true liberty and peace be returned to Spain.
As a firm believer in negotiations and a strategy for peace, the President is under huge pressure to cancel any possible negotiated peace path ahead of him. He has relied heavily on the peace process working within this first administration, and now as it appears to collapse around him, the opposition group is calling for next year's elections to be brought forward in order to maximise what they see as a reaffirmation of their hard-line strategy.
But to many, none of this comes as a total surprise. In recent days the anti-terrorist services have been advising the government of preparations by ETA for a new attack; and for many citizens of Spain the spectacle of the two main political parties bickering over the exact form of the negotiations has led to an expectation that they would break down sooner, if not later. Today, sadly, they did just that.
