“The ETA declared the cease-fire, effective tomorrow, through a videotaped statement released around midday and broadcast on Basque and Spanish television. Unlike two previous cease-fires that collapsed after several months of negotiations, this declaration uses the term "permanent" and makes no conditions.
In the announcement, three members of the guerrilla group, wearing white masks and the black berets typical of Basque country, sit at a table bearing the words Euskal Herria, a reference in Basque to a greater Basque homeland. Behind them hung a banner with the ETA insignia of a snake twisted around a hatchet. The statement was read, unusually, by a woman, who sat in the middle. The group said its purpose was to "drive the democratic process" in the Basque country that ensures "the development of all political options."
"ETA has shown its desire and will that the process now begun should reach a conclusion and thus achieve true democracy in the Basque country, overcoming long years of violence and constructing a peace based on justice," the statement said.
A 1979 referendum established the Basque Autonomous Community on the Bay of Biscay near the French border, comprising the provinces of Alava, Vizcaya and Guipuzcoa. It has its own police force, education system and health system.
Basques, who number about 2.2 million in Spain, are descendants of what may be one of the oldest ethnic groups in Europe. Polls indicate about half favor a free state more loosely associated with Spain. Many who advocate statehood, however, do not support the ETA's violent ways.
The ETA - whose initials are an acronym for Basque Homeland and Freedom in the Basque language (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna) - declared cease-fires in 1989 and 1998, but the negotiations that followed collapsed within a few months.
But this announcement may be different, analysts say, coming after the arrest and imprisonment of senior leaders, the capture of a major arsenal and the banning from politics of its political wing. Opinion polls have shown a widening weariness of violence in the Basque country and growing rejection of bloodshed.
"There can never be a total guarantee, but what's clear is that [the cease-fire] is a solid base for a peace process," said Gorka Espiau, director of Elkarri, a Basque organization in the city of Bilbao that promotes dialogue. "They are showing a will to disappear and end the violence. It is extraordinary."
Espiau, a senior fellow at the Washington-based U.S. Institute of Peace, pointed out that the wording of the communique released yesterday emulated the language of the landmark statement by the Irish Republican Army. “
ETA has been fighting for independence, from Spain, since the Franco years, after World War II.
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