MADRID: Leaders of Basque separatist militant group ETA are asking its members to vote on whether it should dismantle itself completely by the summer, it said in a statement in newspaper Gara.
ETA, which killed more than 850 people during a campaign to carve out an independent state in northern Spain and southwest France, is practically inactive after it handed over arms in April to end nearly half a century of separatist violence.
With the help of mediators, it led French authorities to caches of weapons, explosives and ammunition. It had declared a cease-fire in 2011.
The dissolution vote follows months of internal debate, said Gara, a Basque regional newspaper though which ETA usually releases its statements. Most of the group’s members are serving time in prison.
“The end of the cycle is increasingly evident, and as a result of decisions that were made, it has already occurred to a great extent,” the statement said, without making clear how a definitive dissolution would be carried out.
Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido said on Thursday in a Twitter post that statements were not enough, and he called on ETA to dissolve completely and apologize to victims.
Spain, a country of strong regional identities, is currently grappling with a peaceful separatist movement in Catalonia, which has divided the northeastern region and triggered one of the country’s worst political crises since the end of General Francisco Franco’s dictatorship in 1975.
ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna — Basque Country and Freedom) was founded in 1959 out of anger among Basques at political and cultural repression under Franco.
The group gained notoriety as one of Europe’s most deadly separatist groups. Its first known victim was a secret police chief in San Sebastian in 1968 and its last a French policeman shot in 2010.
It became gradually weaker over the past decade after hundreds of its members were arrested and weapons seized in joint Spanish and French operations.
Basque separatist group ETA to vote on full dissolution by summer
Basque separatist group ETA to vote on full dissolution by summer
NATO wants ‘automated’ defenses along borders with Russia: German general
- That zone would act as a defensive buffer before any enemy forces advanced into “a sort of hot zone,” said Lowin
- The AI-guided system would reinforce existing NATO weapons and deployed forces, the general said
FRANKFURT: NATO is moving to boost its defenses along European borders with Russia by creating an AI-assisted “automated zone” not reliant on human ground forces, a German general said in comments published Saturday.
That zone would act as a defensive buffer before any enemy forces advanced into “a sort of hot zone” where traditional combat could happen, said General Thomas Lowin, NATO’s deputy chief of staff for operations.
He was speaking to the German Sunday newspaper Welt am Sonntag.
The automated area would have sensors to detect enemy forces and activate defenses such as drones, semi-autonomous combat vehicles, land-based robots, as well as automatic air defenses and anti-missile systems, Lowin said.
He added, however, that any decision to use lethal weapons would “always be under human responsibility.”
The sensors — located “on the ground, in space, in cyberspace and in the air” — would cover an area of several thousand kilometers (miles) and detect enemy movements or deployment of weapons, and inform “all NATO countries in real time,” he said.
The AI-guided system would reinforce existing NATO weapons and deployed forces, the general said.
The German newspaper reported that there were test programs in Poland and Romania trying out the proposed capabilities, and all of NATO should be working to make the system operational by the end of 2027.
NATO’s European members are stepping up preparedness out of concern that Russia — whose economy is on a war footing because of its conflict in Ukraine — could seek to further expand, into EU territory.
Poland is about to sign a contract for “the biggest anti-drone system in Europe,” its defense minister, Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, told the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.
Kosiniak-Kamysz did not say how much the deal, involving “different types of weaponry,” would cost, nor which consortium would ink the contract at the end of January.
He said it was being made to respond to “an urgent operational demand.”
