Eta threatens to target anti-terrorist pact

The Basque separatist organisation Eta yesterday claimed responsibility for 16 recent terrorist attacks, including three killings, and warned that signatories to a national anti-terrorist pact will be targets.

The Basque separatist organisation Eta yesterday claimed responsibility for 16 recent terrorist attacks, including three killings, and warned that signatories to a national anti-terrorist pact will be targets.

In an announcement in two Basque language newspapers yesterday Eta admitted responsibility for all 23 killings so far this year, including that of the former socialist minister Ernst Lluch.

Eta described the anti-terrorist pact signed in December by leaders of the ruling Popular Party and the opposition socialists as an antidemocratic gesture by the Spanish state, "a pact of the terrorist state".

Eta's propaganda offensive coincides with the imprisonment of Pepe Rei, editor of the Basque separatist newspaper Black Sheep.

His imprisonment was ordered yesterday by Judge Baltasar Garzon who accused him of collaborating with an armed organisation.

Rei circulated with his newspaper a video in which he described various journalists as "agents of the Interior Ministry".

Several of those identified were subsequently the target of terrorist attacks.