The Basque separatist group ETA said on Tuesday it planted a car bomb that killed two people at Madrid airport on the New Year weekend, but that a ”permanent ceasefire” was still intact.
”ETA affirms that the permanent ceasefire started on March 24 2006 still stands. It claims responsibility for the attack at Barajas [airport],” ETA said in a statement to Gara newspaper, the group’s usual mouthpiece.
The group blamed the government for the breakdown in the peace process and said it did not mean to kill anyone at Barajas on December 30 — the first fatal attack since May 2003.
The Spanish government has since called off a peace process, which many people had hoped would end ETA’s four-decade-old campaign for independence in the Basque Country, an area that stretches across the French-Spanish border.
In a statement, ETA blamed the Socialist government for ”continually creating obstacles to the peace process” and accused the Basque nationalist regional government of siding with the Madrid administration.
It also accused Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s team of not complying with commitments as part of the ceasefire, and called on them to find new formulas to revive the prospects for peace.
ETA said it had given clear warnings about the Barajas bomb.
”The aim of that armed action was not to cause victims,” it said, adding that it had given three telephoned warnings in the name of ETA, giving details of the exact location of the bomb.
The two victims were asleep in their cars when the explosion happened.
Speaking at a news conference, Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said that ETA only had one option — to end violence, but declined to comment further until he had seen the statement himself.
On Monday, Batasuna, a political party banned for its links to ETA, called on the guerrillas to keep the ceasefire.
Since the Madrid airport attack, police in the Basque Country have found stashes of 180kg of explosives, including parts that could be used for limpet bombs, which ETA has typically used to blow up cars.
Earlier on Tuesday, police arrested two suspected ETA members in southern France, the first arrests since the airport bombing. It was not immediately clear if the arrests were linked to the December 30 attack. — Reuters