BERLIN, Jan. 3 (UPI) -- Three days after ETA bombed the Madrid Airport, the Spanish government ended all peace negotiations with the Basque terrorist group.
"The talks are over. ETA has broken, terminated and brought an end to the peace process," Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said.
The cease-fire agreement, struck between the parties last March, now lies buried under the rubble of a multi-story parking lot that ETA bombed this past Saturday at Barajas Airport, killing two people in the process.
Candido Conde-Pumpido, Spain's attorney general said the bomb was a "setback" for the Basque separatist organization.
"ETA's time for terrorism has run out forever and the situation is irreversible. I think Eta has been defeated, and we are at its funeral," Conde-Pumpido told the Spanish El Mundo newspaper.
ETA, which is listed by the United States and the European Union as a terrorist organization, seeks to create an independent socialist state in the Basque country, with territories currently belonging to Spain and France.
For the past 38 years, ETA has attacked military and later civil targets to try and push through its claims, killing nearly 900 people with assassinations and bombings.
While ETA stated in the cease-fire announcement it was committed to bring an end to the conflict by promoting "a democratic process in the Basque country and to build a new framework in which our rights as a people are recognized," many voices in Spain have criticized Zapatero's willingness to engage in direct talks with ETA because of its violent structure and because it broke all of the seven cease-fires of the past. It has now broken the eight.
