MADRID, Spain — A civic support organization for the Basque separatist group ETA disbanded in Spain, a newspaper that acts as a mouthpiece for the separatists reported Saturday.
The news added weight to Spanish governmentclaims that support for ETA’s violent tactics is crumbling. The group had been responsible for hundreds of killings since the late 1960s.
According to Gara newspaper, the support group, Ekin, formed in November 1999 with the aim of “impelling independence, nationbuilding and socialism at street level.”
But Saturday, the paper’s website said two unidentified spokesmen told it: “Ekin members have ended their endeavors as an organization.”
Interior Minister Antonio Camacho said Ekin’s disappearance proved ETA was “in an unstoppable process of dissolution.”
“We are experiencing the last phase of the terrorist group’s existence,” Camacho said.
Government spokesman Jose Blanco said Ekin’s disbanding was yet anotherstep toward ETA’s demise, but he added that it was “not the final step” that Spain hoped for.
“What the whole of Spanish society yearns for is a statement announcing an end to terrorism, and the end of ETA,” Blanco said Saturday.
ETA, which is classified as a terrorist organization by Spain, the European Union and the U.S., has killed 829 people since the late 1960s in a campaign of bombings and shootings aimed at forcing the government to allow the creation of an independent Basque homeland.
Front Section, Pages 14 on 10/02/2011