Spain Dismisses Terrorist Group's Cease-Fire Pledge

(Sept. 6) -- Spain's government today ruled out negotiations with the armed Basque separatist group ETA, saying the terrorist organization only announced a cease-fire Sunday as it is too weak to carry out further attacks.

"ETA is stopping because it can't continue," Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, Spain's interior minister, said today, according to the Financial Times. "ETA is stopping to regroup, make no mistake. We can't trust this, and that means the government is skeptical and that the Interior Ministry is maintaining its anti-terrorist policy."

The terrorist group -- which wants to establish an independent Basque state in northern Spain and southwestern France -- made the cease-fire announcement in a video handed to the BBC this weekend. Three hooded ETA fighters are seen sitting in front of the group's flag, which features a snake wrapped around an ax. "ETA announces that several months ago it took the decision not to carry out armed attacks," a masked woman says in the Basque language. "ETA reaffirms its commitment to a democratic solution so that through dialog and negotiation we Basque citizens can decide our future in a free and democratic manner." At the end of the statement, all three militants raise their fists.

Many analysts have supported the government's dismissal of the cease-fire announcement, noting that the group was forced to stop planning attacks earlier this year after a succession of arrests in France and Spain left it leaderless and disorganized. "[ETA's] statement aims to give political meaning to a strategic rest decreed by ETA's leaders six months ago in order to reorganize internally to cope with police pressure," Florencio Dominguez, an ETA expert, wrote in the daily La Vanguardia.

Dominguez said the critical breakthrough came in February when Ibon Gogeascoechea, a senior ETA boss, was seized in Normandy during a joint French-Spanish operation. That arrest marked the fifth time in two years that police had captured the person directly in charge of ETA's handful of remaining armed units.

Other experts have pointed out that the government is right to be distrustful as ETA has a history of announcing truces, only to break them with devastating attacks. In December 2006, for example, an ETA bomb exploded at Madrid's Barajas airport, killing two civilians, despite the fact that the group had announced a "permanent cease-fire" the previous March.

"ETA is selling smoke," Rogelio Alonso, associate professor of security studies at Madrid's Rey Juan Carlos University, told The Guardian. "Even during their cease-fires, they continue to kill."

ETA, which stands for Euskadi ta Askatasuna (Basque Country and Freedom), has killed more than 800 people since it began its campaign of violence in 1968. Its last victim is believed to have been a French policeman, who was shot dead near Paris after his patrol attempted to arrest a group of car thieves. A man arrested after the shooting identified himself as an ETA member, according to the BBC.