Spanish parties in needle match

ELIZABETH NASH

Madrid

Spain's two main parties have been quick to start campaigning for the general elections set for 3 March, more than a year early. No sooner was parliament dissolved on Tuesday than the governing Socialists and the conservative opposition People's Party (PP) began hurling insults and rallying their forces.

A narrow conservative victory is predicted, perhaps falling short of an absolute majority. That could end the 13-year premiership of Felipe Gonzalez. But if the PP fails to win convincingly, questions may be raised about the future of its leader, Jose Maria Aznar, who has lost before to Mr Gonzalez.

The high stakes, compounded by a personal antipathy between the two leaders, are hardly reflected in the anodyne campaign slogans. "Positively Spain" is a rough translation of the Socialist offering, while the PP slogan "The Centre is Winning" is a shrewd appeal to the electoral middle- ground.

Polls suggest the Socialists trail the PP by up to 9 per cent. The gap narrowed following Mr Gonzalez's announcement before Christmas that he would lead his party in pursuit of a fifth term. But it is wider than on the eve of the last elections in 1993 when the Socialists won without an absolute majority.

Mr Aznar has been using a three-day visit to London to meet John Major and business leaders as a platform for his programme of lower taxes, clean government, law and order and faster growth. But the Socialists' organisation secretary, Cipria Ciscar, accused Mr Aznar yesterday of preparing a "hidden programme" of "privatisations without limit and cuts in social spending". He said a conservative government would provoke "social chaos".

The PP is preparing to hammer the Socialists on corruption scandals that have come to light in recent years, and on the illegal use in the early Eighties of undercover anti-terrorist squads - known as Gal - to combat Eta Basque separatists.

A disaffected former Socialist leader in the Basque country, Ricardo Garcia Damborenea, told the Supreme Court last week that he had attended a meeting in a hotel near Madrid in 1983 with Jose Barrionuevo, then Interior Minister, together with the state security chief and Socialist leaders in the Basque country, at which the anti-Eta campaign - including the kidnapping of Eta suspects in France - was organised.

Eta continues to cast a shadow. The Interior Minister, Juan Alberto Belloch, warned this week that the group planned assassination attempts throughout the election campaign. All democratic parties in the Basque country meet today to plan an anti-terrorist counter-offensive.

Eta is understood to feel well- placed to force the government, or its successor, to the negotiating table. That objective, Mr Belloch said, lay behind Eta's stepped-up bombing campaign before Christmas.