Spain demands action from Caracas over ETA

Spain Wednesday demanded Venezuela take “concrete action” against the alleged representative in Caracas of the Basque separatist group ETA.

Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos met with Venezuela’s ambassador, Isaias Rodriguez, two days after documents showed that two suspected ETA members arrested in Spain last week said they received weapons training in Venezuela.

The suspects said they had met in Venezuela with Arturo Cubillas, who is alleged to be the ETA representative in the country and who was given a senior post in the administration of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 2005.

Moratinos told the ambassador Spain wants “more intense cooperation and concrete and specific actions in relation” to Cubillas, Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega told a news conference.

Judge Eloy Velasco, who is investigating the alleged links between ETA and Colombia’s FARC rebels, has charged Cubillas is responsible for coordinating relations between the two groups.

Venezuela’s government has insisted it “is not linked in any way with any terrorist organisation, especially ETA”.

ETA is blamed for the deaths of 829 people in its four-decade campaign of bombings and shootings to force the creation of a Basque homeland in northern Spain and southwestern France.

It is considered a terrorist organisation by the European Union and the United States.