SPAIN: There are two possible reasons, one malign, the other relatively benign, for Eta's partial move towards ending activities, writes Paddy Woodworth
"We have ended activities against elected members of Spanish political parties," Basque terrorist group Eta announced on Saturday night.
Eta said its move is a result of "recent political changes", and the collapse of the anti-terrorist pact between the Socialist Party (PSOE) that governs in Madrid, and the opposition conservatives of the Partidio Popular (PP).
Predictably, the Spanish government immediately dismissed the statement as inadequate. The prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, has indeed, very controversially, offered "dialogue" to Eta, but only if it calls a permanent and total ceasefire.
Even this modest offer has earned the prime minister unprecedented vilification from PP leader Mariano Rajoy, who has accused him of "betraying Eta's victims", and widespread hostility from ordinary citizens, though it is very popular in the Basque Country.
Eta's new statement is clearly an advance on its call last week for all-party negotiations, without any reference to a ceasefire. Equally clearly, it falls far short of a commitment to end terrorist actions.
The group is implicitly stating that members of the security forces remain targets. One has to assume that academics, judges and journalists remain on its hit list. Indeed, even tourists may still be indirectly targeted, if Eta resumes its habitual summer campaign of beach bombs.
Yet it is well known that even among ETA's broad support base in the Basque Country, commitment to "armed struggle" is at its lowest point ever. Just before last April's elections, Arnaldo Otegi, the leader of Eta's alleged (and banned) political wing, Batasuna, told this reporter that a new ceasefire was a certainty, though he could not say when.
So why then is Eta moving in what might be called baby steps, when all the circumstances seem to require a big leap forward? There are two possible reasons, one malign, the other (relatively) benign.
The malign scenario is that the hard men and women at the core of Eta have no intention of abandoning what has become their raison d'etre. But they need to be seen to respond to the pressure from their own supporters. And they also see an opportunity to exploit the acute divisions between the government and PP on anti-terrorist policy, and many other issues. A "partial" ceasefire like last Saturday's is ambiguous enough to satisfy both these aims.
The benign scenario is that Eta really is seeking an exit strategy, both because it is at its weakest point ever in military terms, and because the Zapatero government has shown real signs of being more flexible about Basque self-determination than any previous government.
But it wants to save face, and at least appear to be dictating the terms of its own departure from the scene. This would probably mean further attempts to carry out a so-called "spectacular", preferably against a property target and without casualties, before announcing a complete cessation.
In the meantime, the citizens of the Basque Country, and of Spain as a whole, have to live under the shadow of this grim cat-and-mouse endgame.