BASQUE ETA? ASAP:

Spain is split over talks with Basque rebels (Renwick McLean, 5/30/05, International Herald Tribune )

The Basque militant group ETA may be weakening, but any discussion over its possible demise is dividing Spain to a degree that its attacks rarely have. Two weeks ago, Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero won parliamentary backing for a proposal to negotiate with the group if it would renounce violence.

The government said the future of ETA was bleak enough that it might be persuaded to disband if offered a chance to negotiate small concessions from Madrid, like the return of imprisoned ETA members to Basque jails.

But the proposal has drawn sharp criticism from the families of victims of ETA bombings, as well as from scholars and editorial writers, and has driven a wedge between the major parties on an issue once considered exempt from partisan politics: the fight against ETA.

Members of the main opposition group in Parliament, the Popular Party, have attacked Zapatero's proposal as tantamount to appeasing terrorists.

The only way to defeat ETA, the opposition party says, is to crush it using all the powers available to Spain's law enforcement agencies.

They've already won, just give them their state.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 30, 2005 9:00 AM