Spain: ETA peace process in 'preliminary' phase

By CNN Madrid Bureau Chief Al Goodman

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MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- Spain's interior minister on Wednesday said the troubled peace process with the Basque separatist group ETA is in a "preliminary" phase, but he declined to confirm a newspaper's report alleging that the government had already held a significant first round of direct talks with ETA.

The report published Wednesday in the Basque newspaper El Correo Vasco prompted Interior Minister Alfredo Rubalcaba to hold a nationally televised news conference.

During it, he said the government would keep its promise to inform parliamentary groups first of any "relevant" advances in the 9-month-old peace process, but that such a moment "has not arrived yet."

"There's nothing relevant to tell the parliamentary groups. Believe me, they'll be the first to know and we're not in that situation yet," Rubalcaba said.

"The process is in its preliminary phases. I hope this phase will lead to other more substantial phases, but that will take time," he added.

The newspaper report about alleged government-ETA talks prompted a flurry of Spanish media speculation, because the peace process is widely considered to be undergoing difficult times.

ETA announced a "permanent" cease-fire last March, raising hopes for an end to nearly 40 years of separatist violence blamed for more than 800 deaths and thousands of injuries.

Many here thought there would have been direct government-ETA talks by the summer, after the government said it had confirmed ETA was sticking to the cease-fire.

But last August, ETA warned in a statement that the process was in "crisis" and that it would "respond" if Spain and France didn't stop what it called "their attacks on Basque citizens."

In the autumn, so-called low-level street violence resumed in the northern Basque region -- which ETA is seeking to make an independent nation -- as pro-ETA youths burned buses and bank automatic teller machines and carried out other attacks.

In late October, authorities blamed ETA for the theft in Nimes, southern France, of 350 pistols and revolvers and 10,000 rounds of ammunition from an arms factory.

The government has said the cease-fire must lead to a total cessation of violence.

But some Spanish media reports have suggested that the whole process might be grinding to a halt, and that full-scale ETA violence might resume.

Analysts told CNN that back-channel communication between intermediaries of the government and ETA has been ongoing before and during the peace process. These analysts speculated that the newspaper's report of the alleged first direct round of government-ETA talks may have been nothing more than a continuation of those discussions.

The intermediaries are said to include Basque politicians from the ruling Socialist Party, but who are not government officials.

Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is due to meet Friday with conservative opposition leader Mariano Rajoy, following months of public bickering between them over the peace process and other issues.

Rajoy's Popular Party opposes talks with ETA and its pro-independence political allies, and has insisted the government must not make any political concessions to ETA.

Pro-independence supporters were expected to be out in the streets of the northern Basque region later Wednesday, to demand self-determination for the Basque provinces, despite a judge's order prohibiting the demonstrations because of their alleged links to ETA.