Word: zabaleta
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...also be seen as part of the reaction of the government of Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to criticism that is soft on Basque and Catalonian nationalism. That criticism has stung the otherwise popular Zapatero in the walk-up to parliamentary elections in March 2008. Patxi Zabaleta, a former Batasuna member and now leader of Aralar, a Basque nationalist party, castigated the government over the arrests. "These people were meeting to talk, without arms," he said. "The right to gather must be respected, in [Burma] and in Spain...
...only once "the noise of guns and bombs comes to an end." And then boom - first in Gexto near Bilbao on Jan. 18, then in a hotel near Alicante on Jan. 30, then last week. "It looks as if ETA is impeding Batasuna's political moves," says Patxi Zabaleta, leader of Basque nationalist group Aralar and a former defense lawyer for ETA prisoners. But Batasuna refuses to criticize its armed brethren. The attack "responds to the perverse logic of this conflict and it shows that a solution is needed," says Pernando Barrena, a Batasuna spokesman. Alberto Surio, political commentator...
...revive the violence now? ETA wants to prove it is still operational despite the string of defeats and the deepened revulsion toward terror since March 11. "Before the parties sit down at the table, ETA wants to show it's coming from a position of strength," says Gemma Zabaleta, a Socialist M.P. in the Basque parliament. "The I.R.A. planted bombs while the governments negotiated." But observers like Gustavo de Arístegui, a Popular Party member of the Spanish parliament from the Basque Country, cast doubt on such comparisons: he argues that the I.R.A. followed Sinn Fein's political lead...
...GEMMA ZABALETA, Basque...
...attack would provoke massive outrage and disgust. "An armed action by ETA now would be understood as an attack against the whole society," says Patxi Zabaleta, a lawyer and former leader of the now banned Batasuna party who has defended many ETA members before Spanish courts. Another reason for ETA to stand down is that Spanish and French police have largely broken the organization in a punishing series of more than 650 arrests since 2000. Earlier this month, French police uncovered an eta bombmaking factory in the French village of Saint Michel, a few kilometers from the Spanish border...