When Is a Cease-Fire Not a Cease-Fire?
The Spanish government has responded very coolly, indeed with something approaching contempt, to last Sunday’s announcement of a cease-fire by the Basque terrorist group ETA.
This is in marked contrast to the warmth, albeit qualified by caution, with which the same administration greeted a similar declaration from ETA in March 2006.
It is not hard to understand why. The 2006 cease-fire came about because the prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, had publicly offered a peace process to ETA the previous year. There had already been informal discussions between the Basque section of Zapatero’s Socialist Party (PSOE) and the armed group.… Seguir leyendo »