By Sonya Dowsett
MADRID (Reuters) - Basque rebel group ETA, weakened by arrests and facing calls for cease-fire within the separatist movement, announced on Sunday it had called a halt to armed attacks, according to the Basque-language newspaper Gara.
Interior ministry officials declined to comment on a video statement on the Gara website delivered by three figures dressed in black, their faces covered with white cloths, holes cut out for their eyes.
Around 850 people have been killed in a four-decade fight to carve out an independent Basque state in northern Spain and southern France.
El Pais newspaper said government sources played down the importance of the move, insisting the group had to lay down arms once and for all.
"It doesn't announce a hand-over of arms or the end of violence -- it's not enough," the source told the newspaper.
The group has been severely weakened by 62 arrests in the first six months of the year, including the high-profile capture of its leader in a joint Spanish-French dawn raid in France in February.
The arrest was a body blow to a group founded during the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco and now facing calls from its own supporters to end its war for Basque independence.
The video showed the three guerrillas at a table under the ETA emblem depicting an axe and snake and next to the Basque flag. They raised their right fists in the air after a woman's voice read out the statement in the Basque language.
"ETA makes it known that for several months now it has taken the decision not to carry out armed attacks," said a transcript, translated from Basque into Spanish.
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It was not clear if the cease-fire was permanent, nor did the guerrillas say why they had decided to stop attacks.
ETA is ready "to start the democratic process," the statement said.
The rebels have not claimed a fatal victim since March when a French police officer was shot and killed in a bungled get-away near Paris after a car robbery.
The murder, the first of a French policeman by the guerrillas, led to vows by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to hunt down the group's supporters.
ETA declared a permanent cease-fire in March 2006, but Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero called off the peace process later that year after the group detonated a car bomb at Madrid airport that killed two Ecuadorians.
At one stage, perhaps 15 percent of Basques sympathised with the struggle for independence for their mountainous homeland, which also traditionally includes part of southwestern France.
But support for violence seems to be ebbing in the Basque Country, which already enjoys considerable political autonomy from Madrid. Members of the political wing of ETA want to enter democratic politics in time for municipal elections in 2011.
They are concerned separatism is losing ground in the Basque country where moderate nationalists lost control of the local government last year for the first time in decades.
(Editing by Ralph Boulton)
