ETA calls ceasefire in Catalonia

The announcement was immediately criticised by political parties across the country.

“It’s an announcement which is repulsive to democracy, to reason, to freedom and especially to the victims of terrorism,” said Interior Minister Angel Acebes.

He described it was “a trap” by which ETA wished to give the appearance that it had an important role to play.

“The only statement I want from ETA is one saying it has broken up and stopped all armed activity in all of Spain,” said Gaspar Llamazares, head of the United Left coalition, Spain’s fourth-ranking political group.

In a statement, an anonymous ETA spokesman said the armed group “had ceased all its activities in the (Catalan) region as of January 1, 2004 with the aim of uniting ties between the Basque and Catalan peoples on the basis of respect, non-interference and solidarity.”

Conservative Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar was to hold a special press conference on the matter today.

ETA last declared a ceasefire in 1998, which lasted 14 months. In recent years, police operations in Spain and France have seriously curtailed its actions. It has killed 46 since the end of the ceasefire, including three people last year.

The group has had 11 ceasefires since the mid-1960s and the latest follows a meeting last month between Eta leaders and the-then second in charge of the Catalan regional government and head of a the pro-Catalan independence Republican Left party, Josep Carod-Rovira.

Carod-Rovira was forced to resign from his post following public disclosure of the secret meeting. He claimed he had agreed to meet the two Eta leaders with the idea of trying to achieve peace, not negotiate.

“Talking with Eta, putting a price on peace is an unacceptable immorality,” Acebes said.

ETA, whose name means Basque Homeland and Freedom, has claimed responsibility for more than 800 deaths since 1968 in its campaign for an independent Basque state in north-west Spain.

The ceasefire announcement came less than a month ahead of general elections in Spain.

Mainstream parties are vigorously opposed to all negotiations with the group, which is classified as a terrorist group by the European Union and the United States.

In the statement, titled “Catalunya-Euskalherria (Basque Country), Solidarity and Respect,” ETA said that it had committed attacks in Catalonia since the 1980s against French and Spanish interests in the region but that now the political climate had changed.

It added that the two regions had much in common, both ”being two nations oppressed by the French and Spanish states.”

Catalonia is located on Spain’s Mediterranean coast just south of the French border. Its capital is Barcelona and it has a population of six million. It’s one of the most economically important of Spain’s 17 semiautonomous regions

Eta has killed several politicians in the region and set off many bombs. In one of its worst attacks ever, it killed 21 people in a 1987 car-bombing at a major supermarket in Barcelona.

In recent years, the group targeted the region’s tourism sector with bombs in hotels and on beaches.