The European Union has agreed on a common list of organisations it considers terrorists, singling out radical Basque separatist, Northern Irish and Middle Eastern groups, the Spanish government said yesterday.
The Basque movement ETA, Lebanon's Hizbullah, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and groups on both sides of the Northern Ireland conflict, including the "Real IRA" and the Ulster Defence Association, were on the list released to the media by Madrid.
The list is part of the EU's efforts since the September 11th attacks on the US to show a united front against terrorist threats. The Union has also created an EU-wide arrest warrant and a common definition of terrorism.
Spain, which takes over the rotating presidency of the EU from Belgium on January 1st, applauded the list's controversial inclusion of several youth groups allegedly linked to the violent Basque separatist ETA as well as pro-amnesty associations.
"This confirms at a European level what all of us already know in Spain, that ETA is not just a band of gunmen who kill, but it is a wide conglomerate which includes a youth organisation with other functions, a pro-amnesty organisation with other functions and they all have the same objective," Spain's Interior Minister Mr Mariano Rajoy told reporters in Madrid.
However, the list did not include radical Basque nationalist political party Batasuna, despite Madrid's efforts to get it included.
Meanwhile, the British Home Secretary, Mr David Blunkett, said yesterday he had changed the immigration rules to help prevent extremist clerics from working in British mosques. His decision marks the official recognition of the complaint by Mr Zaki Badawi, the principal of the UK's Muslim College, that many mosques import imams from countries such as Pakistan who cannot control the extremists who take over their mosques.