MADRID, March 1 (UPI) -- French police have arrested a top military leader of ETA, further weakening the Basque separatist group.
Ibon Gogeascotxea, who Madrid says is the group's most senior military leader, was arrested with two other ETA members in Normandy in northwestern France, Spanish officials said.
Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said the other two suspects -- Beinat Aguinalde Ugartemendia, 26, and Gregorio Jimenez Morales, 55 -- were part of a commando unit ready to enter Spain and stage attacks there.
They had gone to Normandy to "say goodbye to the military chief, who gave them their final instructions as ETA has a habit of doing," BBC News quotes Rubalcaba as saying.
Formed under the oppressive regime of Gen. Francisco Franco, Euskadi ta Askatasuna (Basque Homeland and Freedom), for four decades has fought for an independent state in northern Spain and southwest France and has been blamed for around 850 deaths. It is considered a terrorist organization by the European Union and the United States.
French-Spanish anti-terror cooperation has thinned out the top ranks of ETA. Authorities have arrested 32 ETA suspects in 2010 and Gogeascotxea is the fifth military leader caught in less than two years.
Spanish officials say he is accused of helping place bombs at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao in 1997 in a plot to kill King Juan Carlos.
Police in Portugal and France arrested four suspected ETA militants in January and in February officials raided a suspected ETA bomb-making base, seizing half a ton of explosives.
Last summer ETA staged attacks on the holiday island of Mallorca. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero, who is steering a hard-line course against the group, after the attacks said his goal was to crush ETA.
The recent police successes and waning ETA support at home have caused the political wing of the Basque separatist group to try to revive peaceful negotiations.
The outlawed Batasuna Party is willing to re-enter politics but Madrid wants them to convince ETA to renounce violence first. Experts question whether Batasuna is able to control ETA's rebels in hiding.
A first attempt at peace talks failed in 2006, when ETA militants broke a truce by killing two people with a car bomb at Madrid airport.
ETA's violent resistance dates to the 19th century when religiously conservative Basques disapproved of the too liberal style of governance in Madrid, which aimed for more centralization. The Basque region as early as the Middle Ages enjoyed special privileges and autonomy, although they were not always fully honored by Madrid.
When the Franco government harshly cut some of those privileges and tried to destroy Basque nationalism, ETA formed itself as a militant resistance group aimed at ending the oppression and installing a fully independent Marxist-Leninist Basque state.
