By the BBC's Daniel Schweimler in Madrid

The Basque separatist party, Herri Batasuna, is meeting to choose a new provisional leadership council, whose main challenge will be to try to reignite the peace process in Spain.

The conference in the northern city of Pamplona comes just weeks after the separatist group, ETA, ended its ceasefire and resumed its violent campaign for an independent homeland.

The make-up of Herri Batasuna's 25-member leadership council - the balance of those seen as moderates and those called hardliners - will determine whether any kind of peace process can be reignited in Spain after ETA resumed its violent campaign for an independent homeland last month.

The new council will include some former leaders imprisoned in December, 1997, for their links with ETA.

The council, which was released last July, contains several members known as 'hombres fuertes', or strong men, for their uncompromising views on Basque independence.

While they were in prison, what was seen as a more moderate pragmatic Herri Batasuna leadership negotiated with other nationalist parties in the Basque region and helped lay the foundations for ETA to declare a ceasefire in September, 1998.

Return to violence

The ceasefire raised hopes that an end could be found to 30 years of violence in Spain in which more than 800 people were killed.

But little progress was made in talks with the Spanish Government and the ceasefire was called off last December.

ETA returned to violence in dramatic fashion last month with a bomb attack in Madrid.

Herri Batasuna came under strong attack from its nationalist allies in the Basque region and from the Spanish Government for refusing to condemn the violence.

Herri Batasuna's new leadership will not only have to deal with ETA, but with whatever government emerges after elections in Spain next month.