PARIS, June 20 (UPI) -- The Basque separatist group ETA has announced a partial truce, newspapers report.
In a statement published Saturday in Spain's Basque regional newspaper GARA and attributed to ETA, the group said that since June 1 it had stopped "the front against elected political officials" in Spain.
The government of Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero on Sunday called on the group to renounce its armed struggle altogether.
Earlier this spring the Spanish parliament gave the green light for Zapatero's government to negotiate with ETA, but only under narrowly defined circumstances.
The Basque group is blamed for more than 800 deaths in a three-decade-plus campaign to establish an independent country in northern Spain and parts of southwestern France.
