SPAIN: Conditional offer of dialogue may unleash hostility on all sides, writes Paddy Woodworth
One of the catchphrases of participants in the Northern Irish peace process has been the demand that somebody - usually one's opponents - should "take risks for peace".
If the level of risk taken is a measure of commitment, then the gamble taken in recent weeks by the Spanish Government suggest that the Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, must be very committed indeed to ending Madrid's long conflict with the Basque terrorist group ETA. And if he fails, he will have a long, long way to fall.
His offer to "bring about the end of Eta's terrorism through dialogue", made in last week's state of the nation debate, and repeated this week, flies in the face of conventional Spanish political wisdom.
Zapatero's initiative is carefully hedged with preconditions: no talks can take place until Eta hangs up its guns for good, and that "no political price will be paid for peace". But the proposal has created an unprecedented and potentially dangerous rift between Zapatero's Socialist Party (PSOE) government, and the opposition conservatives of the Partido Popular (PP).
After Eta ended its ceasefire in 1999, and launched an assassination campaign against PP and PSOE local politicians in the Basque Country, "dialogue" and "terrorism" became two words no mainstream Spanish politician would mention in the same breath.
This suited the authoritarian style of the then prime minister, the PP's José María Aznar. He dismissed all talk of peace processes and conflict resolution, insisting that firm police action alone would be enough to defeat Eta.
But it also seemed to suit the more liberal Zapatero, who was a staunch ally of Aznar's in pushing through harsh anti-terrorist measures. Indeed, he sometimes took the initiative in this area himself.
He backed the law which banned Batasuna, the party widely believed to be Eta's political wing, a move which disenfranchised 150,000 radical Basque voters. The anti-terrorist pact, which was in fact Zapatero's brainchild, also effectively excluded the non-violent nationalists of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) from participation in the search for an end to terrorism. Nor was there any indication in Zapatero's 2004 election programme that he proposed a new departure in the Basque arena.
How, then, can we explain the fact that Zapatero quite deliberately decided not to use his draconian powers to prevent what was clearly a Batasuna surrogate party, EHAK, from competing (very successfully) in last April's Basque elections? Or that he has been prepared to turn Spanish politics upside down in pursuit of the kind of deal with Eta which has eluded all his much more experienced predecessors? The PP claims the answer is simply that Zapatero's government is "the worst that Spain has had since the dictatorship".
But the Prime Minister has the support of all the other parties in the Cortes. He also enjoys, crucially, the backing of most of the Spanish public, which traditionally loathes Eta. The perception that the PP behaved with cynical duplicity by attributing the March 11th Islamist bombings to Eta has been influential in this shift in citizens' attitudes.
Ironically, both Zapatero and the PP argue that the anti-terrorist pact has worked very well, putting Eta under such pressure that it is no longer capable of launching more than symbolic attacks. But they draw opposite conclusions. The PP wants more of the same, and the PSOE believes that Eta's weakness offers a rare opportunity for a new political strategy.
It will, however, be extraordinarily hard for Zapatero to pursue this new departure, which may take years to come to any sort of closure, without the bipartisan support of the PP. Whoever leads Eta today must be taking some comfort in the fact that their enemies have never been so deeply divided.
It seems very unlikely, though, that Zapatero would have made this move without having a clear indication from Eta that it would respond positively. Spanish government sources, naturally, officially deny any such contact, which would violate the preconditions laid down by Zapatero.
However, Pernando Barrena, a spokesman for Batasuna, told The Irish Times yesterday that such speculation was "logical". He continued that "we are not aware of any such communication taking place, but we do know from its own statements that Eta has been trying to open a line to the Madrid government for weeks".
He said that Zapatero's initiative is "very welcome", but insists that any Eta-government talks must be paralleled by political discussions with all parties, including Batasuna. His tone was decidedly moderate, a far cry from the rhetoric this group used in the past. The only certain thing is that the Spanish and Basque political landscapes are shifting dramatically. Experience, both in Spain and Northern Ireland, cautions against any premature optimism, and reminds us that, if not very carefully managed, such shifts can lead to earthquakes.
woodworth@ireland.com