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Europe
Spain's Peace Process in Tatters After Basque Separatist Bombing
2007-02-19
SAN SEBASTIAN, Spain -- Call it prophetic or defeatist or just plain cynical. But when the Basque separatist group known as ETA shattered its so-called "permanent cease-fire" in December with a massive bombing at Madrid's airport that killed two people, former ETA leader and convicted killer Eduardo Uriarte was not surprised.

What had stunned him, he said, was that nine months earlier, Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero had bothered to reach out to ETA, which seemed close to final defeat after a nearly 40-year campaign of terror and assassinations that has left more than 800 people dead. "ETA had almost disappeared, and the decision to have a dialogue with them brought ETA back to life," said Uriarte, 61, who spent eight years in prison for his part in the first ETA killing, in 1968. He was released in a general amnesty in 1977 and is now a peace activist.

"A government cannot give a terrorist group credibility and dignity like the Spanish government did," Uriarte said. "ETA is not looking for negotiation. They're looking for victory."
The ETA is a group of killers. I suspect they don't even really know what victory is, and wouldn't know what to do with it if Zappie capitulated and gave them everything. For them the life is planting bombs and killing people. It's what they do.
The Dec. 30 bombing at Madrid's Barajas airport, which leveled a five-story parking lot and killed two Ecuadoran immigrants, may not have surprised Uriarte, but it shocked Zapatero's government and many Spaniards who had dared to hope that peace talks with ETA, formally known as Basque Homeland and Liberty, would finally settle one of Europe's last and longest violent campaigns for independence.
It shocked Zappie because, in socialist mantra, when you make a concession the other side is supposed to do the same. That's 'negotiation' with terrorists. It assumes that terrorists want what you want -- peace. But if they don't, this is what happens, and you end up 'shocked'.
Posted by:Steve White

#3  BTW has anyone figured out how ETA is Bush's fault?
Posted by: AlanC 2007-02-19 11:28

No, it's Richard Nixon's fault - when he was Vice-President. Bush was just a toddler then. Either way, the dummycritters will blame it on a repuglycon.
Posted by: Old Patriot   2007-02-19 14:42  

#2  "A government cannot give a terrorist group credibility and dignity like the Spanish government did," Uriarte said. "ETA is not looking for negotiation. They're looking for victory."

This quote from a former terrorist leader and convicted killer should be branded across the forehead of everyone of the LLL Democrats and the rest of their appeasing ilk.

BTW has anyone figured out how ETA is Bush's fault?
Posted by: AlanC   2007-02-19 11:28  

#1  Sounds like their cease-fires last as long as the Palestinian ones.
Posted by: DarthVader   2007-02-19 00:26  

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