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MADRID (CNN News International) 5 minutes ago — Basque separatist group ETA plans to declare a permanent cease-fire from Friday, a report in the Basque newspaper Gara said today.
Gara is the group’s usual vehicle for statements. The announcement was first made on Basque television.
A cease-fire would be the first step in a long-awaited peace process with ETA, which has killed 850 people since 1968 in its fight to carve an independent state out of northern Spain and south western France.
Eta claimed various bomb attacks in summer 2004
MADRID (The Observer) March 19 — Hopes are rising for an end to four decades of guerrilla war, but Basque militants still want a separate state.
A funeral procession makes its way across the cemetery in the rain, saluted by hundreds of mourners with raised fists. ‘Igor, Igor, herriak ez du barkatuko,’ they yell in Basque to the coffin (The people won’t forgive).
The graveyard of this grey, working- class suburb of Santurtzi is surrounded by riot police. The suicide of Igor Angulo, one of two members of the separatist group Eta to die recently in Spanish prisons, has ignited a wave of unrest not seen for years, which culminated in last week’s general strike called by Batasuna, the outlawed political wing of Eta.
Last month Eta issued a communiqué calling for dialogue and negotiation with the government in Madrid, saying this was the only way forward …
“But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”
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