Murdered Spanish police tracking ETA military chief: 07/12/2007 00:00

Policemen were part of a unit closing in on military head of the Basque separatist group

  MADRID, Dec 7, 2007 - The two Spanish policemen shot dead in France
at the weekend were part of a unit in the "final phase" of an operation to
catch the military head of the Basque separatist group ETA, a newspaper said
Friday.
   "They were members of a major Franco-Spanish police operation that was in
its the final phase" in search of Garikoitz Aspiazu, alias "Txeroki", and were
hoping to catch him this weekend, Spanish daily El Mundo said.
   The paper also echoed others news reports that Aspiazu may have been a
third member of a group which gunned down the two policeman -- Raul Centeno,
24, and Fernando Trapero, 23 -- outside a restaurant in south-west France on
Saturday.
   French police on Wednesday arrested a woman and a man, Saioa Sanchez
Iturregui and Asier Negoa Lopez de Armentia, both thought to be senior ETA
members, over the killings.
   ETA seeks independence for the Basque Country which covers parts of
northern Spain and southwestern France. It has been blamed for the deaths of
more than 800 people, including nearly 200 police, in some four decades.

(AFP)