By IANS,
Cadiz (Spain) : Spain’s Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba Saturday said that talks with the Basque terrorist group ETA are over and the government will not renewed it again.
“At this point, everybody ought to know that nobody in the government will negotiate with ETA again,” Rubalcaba said in a statement, the EFE news agency reported.
The interior minister’s statement came after Esperanza Aguirre, President of Madrid regional governmnet, expressed her fear Friday that Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s government might resume negotiations with ETA again.
ETA was responsible for the Dec 30, 2006 attack on Madrid airport that claimed the lives of two Ecuadorians.
A few months after the attack at Barajas airport, ETA formally called off the unilateral ceasefire it had declared in March 2006.
Meanwhile, the National Court Saturday sentenced to jail five suspected ETA collaborators who were arrested in Spain following the arrest of ETA chief Aitzol Iriondo in France earlier this month.
The terrorist group has killed more than 850 people in its 40 years of fighting with the governemnt demanding an independence of the Basque region.