"There will never again be another credible truce with ETA"

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Spain's Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba

Spain's Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said “there will never again be another credible truce with ETA.". He added the Spanish Government will never again negotiate with the armed Basque group ETA after the attack at Madrid's Barajas airport that left two people dead and about twenty people injured.

In an interview for the US daily The New York Times, the Spanish Interior Minister said "ETA broke their word, they deceived.”

“They have a different logic, a murderous, psychopathic logic.” However, Rubalcaba said the deaths “were probably not part of ETA’s plan.”

According to the Interior Minister, the next time the armed group calls a truce, everyone will say, "A truce, just like the one at Barajas," referring to the attack at Madrid's airport last december 30th.

Batasuna shaken

Rubalcaba considers this attack came as a complete surprise not only to the Spanish Government but also to Batasuna. “Nobody really knows why ETA did it, because we’ve even seen that Batasuna has been completely shaken by it.” “ETA even deceived its own political arm. We knew there was tension with ETA and with Batasuna, but this was a surprise. It was impossible to predict something like this,” Rubalcaba told The New York Times. He remarked ETA had never broken a truce without warning.

The Spanish Minister wonders whether the armed group is reconsidering the decision they made in 2003 to stop killing. "What we are asking ourselves now is whether that decision is being reconsidered. We don’t know.”

Rubalcaba accused ETA of miscalculating by thinking it could “soften up” the government by using violence while hoping to keep talking. “They wanted to negotiate with the only thing they know, which is violence,” he said. “But they went too far.”