Spanish government vexed by Church support for Basque separatist party

BY SIMON CALDWELL
THE CHURCH in Spain has clashed with the Spanish government over plans to ban a Basque separatist political party.
Archbishop Manuel Monteira, the apostolic nuncio to Spain, was summoned to Madrid last Friday after four bishops from the Basque region of the country issued a statement in support of Herri Batasuna, a party which the government claims is the political wing of terrorist organisation ETA.
The dispute began when the bishops, who come from dioceses around Bilbao, San Sebastian and Vittoria, wrote a pastoral letter called "Prepare Peace", which was published in El Pais newspaper.
They warned of "sombre consequences" for "our coexistence and the cause of peace" if the government pressed ahead with plans to change the law to exclude parties suspected of supporting terrorism.
The bishops claimed that the law could aggravate "division and civic confrontation" and put more people in danger of terrorist atrocities. They also condemned terrorist violence and said ETA "must disappear".
Their remarks, however, caused fury in Prime Minister Jose Aznar's centre-right party. Foreign Minister Joseph Pique summoned Archbishop Monteira to express its "vexation and uneasiness" over the letter, while Spain's Ambassador to the Holy See also protested directly to the Vatican. The opposition Socialist Party also condemned the letter. Leader Jose Rodriguez Zapatero said it was a "deeply misguided manifesto which doesn't help guarantee the rights and freedoms of Basque citizens".
The Spanish bishops' conference distanced themselves from the letter, insisting it was the "exclusive responsibility" of the Basque bishops.
In a statement, they said the bishops' conference "has not thought it necessary to pronounce itself" over the legality of political parties.
But as the dispute developed, more than 350 Basque priests came out in public support of the statement.
Rome had no immediate comment on the pastoral letter. Fr Ciro Benedettini, the assis tant director of the Vatican press office, told reporters that the Holy See "will not intervene for the moment" .
Mainstream Basque politicians have previously expressed uneasiness over the efforts of Madrid to ban Batasuna.
The party denies links to ETA, which since 1968 has killed more than 800 people as part of a campaign for an independent state that would encompass the western Pyrenees of Spain and France.
In December last year, the European Union declared ETA a terrorist group but refused to include Batasuna, largely because it was a legal political party with a member elected to the European Parliament.
Last year Batasuna won 10 per cent of the vote in the Basque regional elections.