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THE UNPRECEDENTED killing of a French police officer by the Basque terrorist group Eta marks a critical, possibly even terminal, departure in its half-century-old campaign for an independent Basque state. It will put Eta members under enormous pressure from the French security forces and, more significantly, bring the group close to rupture with its own supporters on the Spanish side of the border.

ETA claims that both the French and Spanish Basque provinces should form part of an independent state, but its big quarrel has always been with Madrid, not Paris. Indeed, Eta enjoyed significant support from the French authorities and public during its first decades.