The peace process between the Spanish government and the Basque terrorist group Eta is in difficulty before it has taken more than a few faltering steps, following Eta's ceasefire last March.
Eta warned last week that the process was "immersed in crisis". The group accused the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of exploiting the process for its own ends. Ominously, it threatened an unspecified "response" if the security forces continued to "repress" the Basque independence movement.
Peace processes, by definition, involve elements of posturing, and the Madrid spokesman who dismissed Eta's statement as "playing politics" may be correct. But such complacency ignores recent warning signs and the exceptionally difficult context in which this process is taking place. Batasuna, the banned party widely regarded as Eta's political front, has clearly become deeply frustrated by the considerable obstacles which remain in the way of its legalisation.
No meaningful new deal for the Basque Country can even be drafted without Batasuna at the table. Yet senior members of Zapatero's Socialist Party (PSOE) insist that Batasuna must formally "reject violence" before it can participate in democratic politics. The Basque radicals argue that, in the absence of violence from Eta, whose ceasefire is holding solidly, such calls are simply an attempt to humiliate them. Pernando Barrena, a Batasuna spokesman who is regarded as a strong supporter of the shift from guns to politics said, in advance of the Eta statement, that he no longer believed the process was "irreversible" - an indication that real pressure to return to violence may be building up against "doves" in the movement.
Eta claims that agreements made by Madrid regarding police pressure on militants, and on prisoner issues, have not been honoured. The government denies any such deals exist, but these questions, plus disposal of weapons, must surely form the core agenda of the secret "technical" talks currently taking place with the group. Political talks, as the government says, can only take place with political parties.
However, Zapatero is also under great pressure from the right-wing opposition, the Partido Popular. This party has campaigned aggressively to abort the process, accusing the government of "surrendering to terrorism". In this context, the prime minister took a courageous risk for peace in offering talks to Eta in the first place, though the offer was conditional on a total ceasefire. And he was brave when he allowed Basque representatives of his party to meet Batasuna last month.
Some Eta militants may want to end the ceasefire, but there is no doubt that most Batasuna supporters, and the great majority of Basques, want a peaceful resolution to this conflict. It would be a tragedy if a combination of pressures, from diehard terrorists and inflexible conservatives, denied them that opportunity.