A parking lot at Madrid Airport was gutted by a car bomb explosion Saturday morning, shattering a nine-month-old ceasefire committed by the Basque separatist group ETA.

 

The bomb went off at about 9:30 AM (0830 GMT) at the airport's new Terminal Four. Prior to the explosion, the authorities had received two warning phone calls, including one allegedly by ETA.

 

Shortly after the incident, Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba attacked the group, saying they had broken their ceasefire commitment.

 

Two police officers suffered slight injuries, the authorities said.

 

 

The ETA, seeking independence for the Basque Country, a region that straddles northeastern Spain and southwestern France, has killed 850 people in its separatist activities since 1968.

 

It announced a "permanent ceasefire" on March 22. Three months later, Spanish Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, said his government would begin talks with the armed separatist group, but that he would never accept the independence of the Basque region.

 

The process has also been strained by frequent politically motivated vandalism by ETA supporters and by a weapons robbery in France, suspected by authorities to have been the work of the guerrillas.

 

The bomb may not come as a major surprise to observers given ETA's threats last month to derail the peace process should no swift progress be made.

 

 

 

 

(Xinhua News Agency December 31, 2006)