Spain refuses Eta offer to hand over its weapons
Spain's government has flatly rejected an offer by Basque terrorist group Eta to negotiate a handover of weapons and called instead for its unconditional dissolution.
Three ETA militants pictured in 2011 are dressed in black shirts with white hoods over their heads making a declaration in an undisclosed location. Photo: AFP
By Fiona Govan, Barcelona
5:33PM GMT 25 Nov 2012
Eta announced in a statement released Saturday that it was ready to dismantle its military operations and turn over its arms if, in return, the government would agree to move Eta prisoners to the Basque region.
Around 700 convicted members of Eta are currently incarcerated across Spain and their families have long mounted a campaign for their transfer closer to home.
The group, which last year announced a definitive end to its armed struggle, said it was ready to discuss "formulas and timetables" to bring home prisoners and Basque political exiles, in return for disarmament.
Failure by the government to open such negotiations would pose "a real risk of the process stalling," the group said in its statement to Basque newspaper, Gara.
But Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's conservative government refused to consider talks with Eta.
"They know that we have not negotiated nor will we negotiate in any way with the terrorist organization," Fernandez Diaz, Spain's Interior Minister, said Sunday.
"So the only statement the government demands, not requests but demands and is working for, is its unconditional dissolution," he said.
Eta, which stands for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, Basque Homeland and Freedom, is blamed for 829 killings over a four-decade armed campaign for an independent homeland encompassing parts of northern Spain and south-western France.
The group announced a "permanent ceasefire" in January last year, a move widely seen as acknowledgement that Eta had been weakened by cross-border cooperation between France and Spain that led to the arrests of successive leaders and commando units.
Previous "ceasefires" have been used as an opportunity to rearm and regroup before being broken with brutal attacks.
In December 2006, a bomb at Madrid's airport that killed two people and injured hundreds brought an end to a nine-month ceasefire.
