GETXO, Spain (AFP) — ETA set off another powerful car bomb on Monday, on the eve of a visit to Madrid by the head of the Basque regional government aimed at developing new political relations with the rest of Spain.
The separatist group set off a van packed with 60 kilogrammes (132 pounds) of explosives, damaging a yacht club in Getxo, an affluent suburb of the Basque economic capital Bilbao, in the early hours of Monday, police said.
The blast, which tore a hole in the ground and could be heard several kilometres (miles) away, ripped open several floors of the boat club but caused no injuries.
ETA claimed responsibility in a telephone warning and the Citroen Berlingo van was the same model as one used in an attack last Wednesday against a civil guard barracks in the Basque village of Legutiano which killed one guard.
Florencio Dominguez, the editor-in-chief of the Bilbao-based Basque news agency Vaaco Press, said the attacks were aimed at influencing the meeting scheduled for Tuesday between Basque regional Premier Juan Jose Ibarretxe and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.
"A few hours before the meeting between Ibarretxe and Zapatero, ETA is trying to say: 'Talk all you want but you can't resolve anything without us'," said Dominguez, who has follwed ETA's activities for decades.
"This is part of the rules of the game for a terrorist organisation that wants to be taken into account," he added.
ETA, whose symbol is a snake wrapped around an axe, has killed more than 820 people in its 40-year campaign of bombings and shootings to carve a Basque homeland out of northern Spain and southwestern France.
Ibarretxe is expected to defend his "road map" for new political relations for the region with the rest of Spain, similar to the one he unveiled last year during a previous meeting with Zapatero.
The plan includes referendums on self-determination, a historical ETA demand.
Zapatero has already said any regional referendum would be unconstitutional but he has said he is open to the idea of more autonomy for the Basque Country, which already enjoys a high level of self-government.
Madrid's Socialist government has already introduced a new charter granting the wealthy northeastern region of Catalonia greater autonomy. The independence-minded region backed the charter in a referendum held in June 2006.
In its latest statement issued on May 9, ETA accused Zapatero's Socialists and Ibarretxe's Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), which runs the regional government, of seeking to impose a new autonomy accord on the Basque region.
"We will never accept an imposed situation," it said.
ETA announced a "permanent ceasefire" in March 2006 but formally called it off in June 2007 citing frustration with the lack of concessions on the part of the government in their tentative peace process.
Since then, the group has claimed responsibility for about 20 attacks.
Dominguez said the two latest ETA attacks were a sign that the group once again has "a centralised structure operating in France to supply it with booby-trapped vehicles."
The van used in last week's attack was stolen in Limoges, western France.
ETA has traditionally used southwestern France as a rear base where it prepares the attacks it carries out in Spain.
The group, whose initials stand for Euskadi ta Askatasuna, or Basque Homeland and Freedom in the Basque language, is considered a terrorist organisation by the European Union and the United States.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
