By Sonya Dowsett
MADRID (Reuters) - The Basque rebel group ETA called a halt to armed attacks on Sunday but the government said the declaration was not enough and urged the weakened organisation to renounce violence once and for all.
The group, which has killed more than 850 people in half a century of armed struggle for an independent state in northern Spain and southwest France, has been crippled by arrests of its members and a rise in support among Basques for legal politics.
In the video, which appeared on the website of the Basque newspaper Gara, three masked and black-clad figures appeared seated under the ETA emblem depicting an axe and snake, and flanked by the Basque flag.
The central figure read a statement in the Basque language, then all three raised their right fists in the air.
"ETA makes it known that for several months now it has taken the decision not to carry out armed attacks," said a transcript of the statement posted on the site, translated into Spanish.
The statement did not make clear if the cease-fire was permanent, nor did the guerrillas say why they had decided to stop attacks.
The government has said it will not talk to ETA's political supporters until they renounce violence for good. ETA has broken two truces in the past.
"Spanish society, a democracy like ours, demands from the terrorist group something very clear: put down your arms for good and disband," Leire Pajin, secretary of the ruling Socialist party, said in a radio interview.
Experts said the statement showed the group is unsure about its next moves. Journalist Luis Aizpeolea wrote in El Pais newspaper: "Everything points towards ETA buying time with the cease-fire while it decides on its future."
FADING SUPPORT
The government walked away from peace talks after ETA blew up a Madrid airport building in December 2006, killing two Ecuadoreans asleep in their cars and ending the group's first "permanent cease-fire," which lasted just nine months.
A total of 62 suspected ETA members were arrested in the first six months of this year. Police arrested the group's top leader, wanted for trying to kill Spain's King Juan Carlos in 1997, in France in February in a joint Spanish-French dawn raid.
The shooting of a French policeman near Paris in March during a bungled getaway was ETA's last fatal attack and the first murder of a French policeman, leading to vows from President Nicolas Sarkozy to hunt down the group's supporters.
Many of those seeking independence for the mountainous Basque lands have turned away from violence and want to re-enter legal politics in time for municipal elections in 2011.
At one stage, around 15 percent of Basques sympathised with the struggle for independence, but support for violence is fading in the region, which already has considerable political autonomy from Madrid.
One of the leading members of ETA's banned political wing Batasuna, Rufino Etxeberria, has called on the rebels to lay down their arms.
Traditional supporters of ETA are worried that 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.
The industrial area is suffering its share of Spain's worst economic slowdown in half a century, which has brought national unemployment up to the highest in the euro zone at 20 percent.
(Editing by Peter Graff)
