SPAIN:Basque separatist group Eta said yesterday it stood by a permanent ceasefire declared last March despite claiming responsibility for a car bomb that killed two people at Madrid airport at the new year weekend.
The group blamed the government for the breakdown in the peace process and said it did not mean to kill anyone in the blast that destroyed a five-storey car park at Madrid airport's terminal four on December 30th - the first fatal attack carried out by Eta since May 2003.
"Eta affirms that the permanent ceasefire started on March 24th, 2006 still stands. It claims responsibility for the attack at Barajas [ airport]," the group said in a note to Gara newspaper, its usual means of issuing statements.
Since the bomb, the Spanish government has called off a peace process which many hoped would end Eta's four-decade campaign for independence in the Basque country, an area that stretches across the French-Spanish border.
Eta blamed the socialist government for "continually creating obstacles to the peace process" and accused the Basque nationalist regional government of siding with Madrid.
Eta said it gave clear warnings about the airport attack with three phone calls giving the exact location of the bomb.
At a news conference, interior minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba said Eta had only one option - to end violence - but declined to comment further on its statement until he had seen it.
Before the statement, Mr Rubalcaba was quoted in an interview with the New York Timessaying that there would "never again be a credible truce with Eta" because the group had gone back on its word by breaking the ceasefire without formal warning.
On Monday, Batasuna, a political party banned for its links to Eta, called on the guerrillas to keep the ceasefire.
Since the Madrid airport attack police in the Basque country have found stashes of 180kg of explosives, including parts that could be used for limpet bombs, which Eta has typically used to blow up cars.
Earlier yesterday, police arrested two suspected Eta members, Garikoitz Etxebarria Goikoetxea and Asier Larrinaga Rodríguez, in southern France, the first arrests since the bombing.
The two men are believed to be linked to an arms cache discovered on December 23rd in the Basque town of Amorebieta in northern Spain and to explosives found last week in the same area.