Car Bombings in Spain End Basque Group’s Cease-Fire; Army Man Killed

Basque separatists in Spain ended a 19-month lull in their guerrilla war Friday by killing an army officer in one of two car bombings apparently aimed at hurting Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar’s party in parliamentary elections.

The blasts in Madrid, set off by remote control during the morning rush hour, rocked a neighborhood populated by military personnel. The first blast killed army Lt. Col. Pedro Antonio Blanco Garcia, 48, as he walked past a car packed with explosives; a 14-year-old girl was also wounded. A second car bomb exploded a quarter of a mile away, but no one was hurt in that blast.

Police blamed the attacks on the Basque Homeland and Freedom movement, known by its Basque initials, ETA. The group announced early last month that it was ending the longest cease-fire of its 31-year armed struggle because Aznar’s government had refused to discuss its demands for Basque self-determination and had continued to arrest its leaders.

ETA, which usually waits weeks to explain its actions, did not claim responsibility for Friday’s bombings. But a statement by its political wing--Euskal Herritarrock, or Basque Citizens--left no doubt that the guerrillas had struck for the first time since June 1998.

Spaniards have been fearing an ETA attack for weeks, and police have seized several suspected ETA members en route to Madrid who had bomb-making materials.

Friday’s blasts set off a wave of panic in the capital and a flurry of denunciations by nearly every Spanish political party, including moderate Basque nationalists who had blamed Aznar’s center-right government for the breakdown of the truce.

“The only response to ETA is to detain the terrorists and prevent their attacks,” government spokesman Josep Pique told reporters. “ETA will never achieve their goal through violence.”

The bombings came four days after Aznar set March 12 as the date for Spain’s next parliamentary elections, and they immediately made the Basque conflict a prime campaign issue.

ETA and its political wing are demanding a referendum on independence for the 2.6 million people who live in the four historic Basque provinces of northern Spain and for 250,000 others in the adjacent Basque region of southern France.

Aznar has refused to discuss outright sovereignty for the Basque country, which already collects its own taxes, teaches in the Basque language in its public schools and has its own 7,000-member police force. His government has been willing to discuss only rebel disarmament and leniency for hundreds of Basque prisoners and exiles.

The prime minister is favored to win a new four-year term on the strength of Spain’s economic health, but the hard line against ETA is also a plank of his Popular Party’s platform. The party lacks a majority in parliament but had been expected to do well enough to keep the ruling coalition in power.

The bombings were seen as an attempt by ETA to hurt the party’s chances by denying Aznar credit for a “peace dividend.”

ETA views the Popular Party as the heir to former dictator Francisco Franco, whose repression of the Basque culture and language during his nearly four decades in power fed the insurgency, which has claimed about 880 lives since 1968.

ETA’s announcement last month that it was ending its unilateral truce put Aznar on the defensive. Opposition leaders, pointing to the successful peace process in Northern Ireland, questioned whether he had wasted Spain’s best opportunity in years to end its own civil conflict.

It remains to be seen whether renewed violence in Spain will help or hurt Aznar. Some politicians said Friday that he might benefit from an anti-ETA backlash. Marches to protest the bombings are planned for Monday in Madrid and the Basque cities of Bilbao and San Sebastian.

The moderate Basque Nationalist Party, which governs Spain’s Basque country, said Friday that it was suspending its alliance with ETA’s political wing until that group condemns the bombings. The moderate party’s leader, Javier Arzalluz, recently warned that an ETA attack during the campaign would all but guarantee an Aznar victory.

Aznar’s aides justified their hard-line stance during the truce by claiming that ETA was not sincere. Police officials claimed that the rebels were taking a breather to regroup and rearm and eventually would resume their attacks.