ETA announces historical cease-fire

The Basque terrorist group ETA announced on Wednesday a permanent cease-fire to its wave of bombing attacks throughout Spain. In a communique broadcast on Radio Euskadi and repeated in other Basque media outlets, ETA said it would incorporate itself into the democratic process to seek peaceful means for an independent homeland.

The cease-fire, which will take effect on Friday, puts an end to the violent struggle embarked four decades ago by one of Europe´s long standing terrorist organizations.

The Spanish government welcomed the announcement but urged caution, saying that it had to verify whether the offer was genuine. Speculation that ETA was ready to lay down its arms had been circulating for weeks. Even Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero said that he was confident that the separatist group would renounce violence in the coming months.

Since the late 1960s, the group has terrorized Spanish society by waging a series of bombings that has taken the lives of more than 800 people in an effort to carve out an independent country in Spain´s Basque region and parts of southern France. The last fatal attack came in 2003 when a bomb killed two policemen. Since then, ETA had been staging small bomb attacks aimed at certain Basque businesses.

"The aim of (the cease-fire) is to promote a democratic process in the Basque country and to build a new framework in which our rights as a people will be recognized," the statement said. "ETA also calls on the Spanish and French authorities to respond positively to this new situation, leaving their repressive ways behind."