Eta rejects conditions for peace talks

The Basque separatist organisation Eta ended a week-long truce yesterday, dashing the best hopes for years that contacts could be opened with the Spanish government. But the Interior Minister, Jaime Mayor Oreja, said that the government would continue to transfer Eta prisoners to jails nearer their families, a key Eta demand.

In a communique published in the newspaper Egin, Eta rejected conditions for dialogue set by Basque political parties, including branches of national parties, but said it remained open to the possibility of talks. Mr Mayor Oreja said he was disappointed but not surprised at Eta's decision, which he said reflected their isolation and fear.

Madrid initially dismissed the ceasefire as "a trick", saying that it was too short and a mockery, given that Eta still holds a prison officer hostage. But in the course of last week, the government said it was prepared to open indirect talks with Eta if the organisation ended its campaign of violence and freed Jose Antonio Ortega Lara whom it kidnapped in January.

It was the first time for seven years that Madrid had publicly countenanced the prospect of talks. In 1989, the Socialist government sent representatives to Algeria to contact exiled Eta leaders, but the talks collapsed and the peace process drowned in a wave of Eta violence.

The present conservative government was elected last March on a strenuously anti-Eta programme, ruling out the possibility of talks. Its about-turn owed much to the influence of the conservative Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) which, with the Catalans, formed a ruling pact with the minority Popular Party.

The PNV has long urged jaw-jaw rather than war-war as a solution to Basque terrorism, and its leader, Xabier Arzalluz, called until the last minute for Eta to prolong its truce, saying this was the earnest wish of the majority of the Basque people. The agreement to transfer 32 prisoners was negotiated in recent weeks between PNV leaders in the Basque countryand the interior ministry. The government's decision, taken for humanitarian reasons and to win ground in Basque public opinion, was cautiously welcomed by Eta's political wing, Herri Batasuna (HB), but fell short of Eta's demand that all 500 prisoners be moved.

The Basque country's PNV interior minister, Juan Maria Atutxa, attributed Eta's rejection of the proffered olive branch to fear. "Eta is undoubtedly afraid to take the road towards conciliation because it is aware that it could lead to a process of internal disintegration," he said yesterday.

One disillusioned former HB leader said recently that Eta's current leadership had become so immured in its military structures and dogma that it had lost touch with the real world.

Eta's decision yesterday was followed by a terse announcement by the Prime Minister, Jose Maria Aznar, that thepeace initiative was now closed. For the moment, it may be expected that the violence that has claimed more than 800 lives over 25 years will go on.