New ETA attacks in Spain

Spain was hit by a series of ETA attacks at the beginning of the week after Spanish courts banned two Basque separatist parties for supporting terrorism. The daily Berliner Zeitung comments: "For the first time since the Socialists took power all the parties represented in parliament as well as the employers' associations and trade unions have jointly condemned the recent attacks in a communiqué. Up to now the conservative opposition leader Mariono Rajoy had refused to make any joint statements until the Socialists ruled out any kind of dialogue with ETA. Now he has attended the funeral of the murdered soldiers together with Prime Minister José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero. This was an important message. These most recent attacks may be ETA's response to a ban against two parties with which it has close ties, but that doesn't explain why a sergeant has to die because a judge imposes a ban. Incidentally, the advisability of such a ban is just as debatable as the appropriateness of banning the [ultra right] NPD [in Germany]. But perhaps the attacks were first and foremost intended as a message to its [ETA's] own uneasy ranks."

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