Eta calls for talks with Madrid

Eta says it wants Basques to have a referendum on independence

The armed Basque separatist group Eta says it is prepared to enter political dialogue with the Spanish government.

It says it had adopted proposals put forward two months ago by its political wing Batasuna.

The proposals include a referendum for the Basque country on whether to remain part of Spain or go its own way.

But Spain's main political parties have already rejected the Batasuna proposals, because they make no mention of an immediate ceasefire.

Batasuna called in November for "exclusively political and democratic" talks to "take the conflict off the streets".

You can't talk to someone with a gun in his hand... Nobody sensible can sit down with these people Jose Bono Spanish Defence Minister

An Eta statement, published in the Basque newspaper Gara on Sunday, said the group was "perfectly willing to take part in a process of those characteristics", and that it was "essential that the whole society has a chance to participate in such a process".

It said the proposal was "the most solid political contribution yet proposed in the face of the conflict between the greater Basque Country and the states [of Spain and France]".

Hoax denial

But Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero says there can be no dialogue without a ceasefire first.

Responding on Sunday to Eta's press statement, Spain's Defence Minister Jose Bono said: "You can't talk to someone with a gun in his hand... Nobody sensible can sit down with these people."

Eta has been blamed for more than 800 deaths since the 1960s in its battle to form an independent Basque homeland.

At the same time as it called for peace, the Eta communique claimed responsibility for 23 attacks - none of them fatal - carried out in Spain since September last year.

But it denied it was behind a 12 December bomb hoax during a football match between Real Madrid and Basque side Real Sociedad at Madrid's Bernabeu stadium, which forced the match to be abandoned and 70,000 spectators evacuated.