'Peaceful' ETA admits fatal blast at airport

Published on Wednesday 10 January 2007 01:17

THE Basque separatist group ETA said yesterday it stood by a permanent ceasefire declared in March, despite claiming responsibility for a car bomb that killed two people at Madrid Airport at the New Year.

The group blamed the government for the breakdown in the peace process and said it did not mean to kill anyone in the blast that destroyed a five-storey car park at Terminal 4 on 30 December - its first fatal attack since May 2003.

"ETA affirms that the permanent ceasefire started on 24 March, 2006, still stands. It claims responsibility for the attack at Barajas (airport)," ETA said in a note to Gara newspaper, the way the group usually makes its statements.

Since the bomb, the Spanish government has called off a peace process which many hoped would end ETA's four-decade campaign for independence in the Basque country, an area that stretches across the French-Spanish border.

ETA blamed the Socialist government for "continually creating obstacles to the peace process" and accused the Basque nationalist regional government of siding with Madrid.

It also said prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's team had not kept its commitments and called for an end to police and political pressure.