Spain's prime minister said today he will seek to open peace talks with the armed Basque separatist group ETA, which declared a permanent cease-fire in March.
Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said he will go before Parliament next month to announce "the start of the process of dialogue to achieve the end of violence with ETA."
He spoke in the Basque town of Barakaldo, near Bilbao, at a rally of his governing Socialist Party during his first visit to the region since ETA announced what it called a permanent cease-fire on March 22.
Zapatero, accused by conservatives of rushing into a peace process with ETA and ignoring victims of the group's violence, also said he would propose including a mention of them in the preamble of the Spanish constitution.
ETA has killed more than 800 people since the late 1960s in its battle for an independent Basque homeland in northern Spain and southwest France.
The government says the group has been decimated by more than 200 arrests of suspected members in recent years.
ETA is also seen as stymied by the 2004 terror attacks by Islamic militants in Madrid, which killed 191 people and caused nationwide revulsion over terrorism, even among Basque nationalists who support ETA's goals of independence if not its methods.
ETA has not staged a fatal attack since May 2003 when a car bomb killed two policemen in the northern town of Sanguesa.
When it announced the cease-fire, ETA said it wanted a negotiated solution to the decades-old conflict.