Spanish PM says ETA must take more convincing steps

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said ETA’s ceasefire declaration Monday was not good enough, demanding instead “much more convincing and definitive steps”.

Armed Basque separatist ETA’s statement of a permanent, internationally verifiable ceasefire was “no good,” the prime minister said in an interview with television station Antena 3,

“It has to take much more convincing and definitive steps,” Zapatero said in his first public comments since the declaration.

“We are not going to allow any trick,” he said.

ETA announced a permanent, verifiable ceasefire after more than 40 years of bloodshed but Spain’s government rejected it as insufficient for failing to promise an irreversible, definitive end to the violence.

The armed group’s campaign of bombings and shootings for a homeland independent of Spain has claimed the lives of 829 people.

ETA announced what it described as a permanent ceasefire in March 2006 within the framework of negotiations with Madrid. But in December 2006, ETA set off a bomb in the carpark of Madrid-Barajas airport, killing two men.