A CLAIM that Spanish diplomatic intervention dissuaded Irish government representatives from meeting a delegation from a Basque political party in Dublin this week was denied by a government spokesman yesterday.
The delegation was from Herri Batasuna, a party which shares the aims - but not, it says, the methods - of the Basque revolutionary group, ETA. Mr Karmelo Landa, a former Herri Batasupa MEP, told a press conference in Dublin yesterday it had sought a meeting with the Minister of State for European Affairs, Mr Gay Mitchell. According to his account, a meeting arranged with Mr Mitchell's officials was called off at the last moment.
"It is our hypothesis that the hand of Spanish diplomacy does not want us to make our case for Basque peace proposals in Dublin."
A spokesman for Mr Mitchell said he had simply been too busy to respond to the request. "Any suggestion of diplomatic intervention is absurd." The Spanish Embassy said it was unaware of any such contacts set up here by Herri Batusana.
Mr Landa said the delegation was seeking support from Ireland, while it holds the EU Presidency, for peace proposals advanced by his party and ETA. He also sought solidarity for the party's national executive, which has collectively been called to answer charges of collaboration with terrorism before Spain's Supreme Court.
Herri Batasuna and ETA share the aims of unifying the Spanish and French Basque provinces in an independent socialist state. The party currently gets about 15 per cent of the vote in the Spanish Basque region, where three provinces already enjoy extensive local autonomy.
The party's "democratic alternative" sets two minimum conditions for the cessation of ETA's campaign of violence, which has claimed more than 800 lives since the group was founded in 1959. These are recognition of the right to self determination and territorial unity, and the promise of Madrid to abide by the results of a referendum on this issue.
Mr Landa rejected the view that his party's minority vote within the Basque Country was itself a democratic rejection of such proposals. Unless self determination was explicitly on the political agenda, he said, you could not expect people to vote for it.
Asked how the injuring of an Irish boy and his mother, during ETA's bombing campaign against tourist targets this summer, advanced Basque independence, he first suggested it was time to end the press conference. Then he relented: "It is useless to condemn concrete actions of ETA. We are an independent political party and defend these peace proposals as the only way to overcome the violence between ETA and the Spanish state."