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Spain: Peace for the Basque community

01 March 1995

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The first meeting of the Conference on Peace for Euskal Herria (Basque country) took place in Bilbao between March 8-12. The meeting, on "Autonomy, sovereignty and self-determination", was organised by the Social Movement for Dialogue and Agreement (ELKARRI). Among the participants were the Nationalist Basque Party (PNV), Basque Solidarity (EA), Unity of Alva (UA), United Left (IU-EB) and Herri Batusana. It was chaired by Felix Marti, the president of UNESCO in Catalonia, and two well-known Basque journalists. Joe Austin, from Sinn Fein, also participated and gave a talk on the peace process in northern Ireland.

The Conference held parallel sessions attended by pacifist organisations, intellectuals and Basque journalists and hosted discussions between the political parties. These saw agreement on the political character of the conflict in the Basque-country as well as the necessity to open new avenues of dialogue in order to attain peace. The EA, UA and IU-EB said that an ETA truce would be sign of their good intention, while the PNV saw no restrictions to the development of a dialogue. Herri Batasuna (HB) called on the government to open contacts with ETA.

Neither the PSOE nor the PP participated in the conference. They claimed that an ETA truce was a precondition for a meeting and denied that the right of self-determination was central to the resolution of the conflict.

Kontrola Kontrolpean, Donostia, Euskadi (Spain)

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