Spain's Aznar rules out Basque plan for new status

MADRID, Sept 30 (AFP) - Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar said Tuesday that a plan by the autonomous Basque government to change the region's political status to one of "free association" with the rest of the country had "zero" chances of success.

The president of the Basque government, Juan Jose Ibarretxe, told the regional parliament in Vitoria on Friday that the plan to bolster Basque autonomy would be presented to parliament next year with a view to opening talks with Madrid on the new status.

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But Aznar made clear it was a non-starter.

"The chances that this plan will amount to something are literally zero," Aznar told reporters during a joint news conference with Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, who on Monday began a state visit to Spain.

Aznar said the proposal would be considered "laughable were there not bombs and guns, still smouldering, and victims involved," in a reference to attacks by the armed Basque separatist group ETA, whose commandos have killed about 800 people in the past 35 years.

"It's a plan that is born out of terror and says that terror is right, which is extraordinarily serious," Aznar added.

Aznar described the plan as an "act of deep disloyalty combined with an act of unacceptable blackmail".

Ibarretxe has stressed that the Basque government intends to put the plan to a referendum regardless of the outcome of its talks with the central government.

"Spanish democracy will in no way accept the least blackmail," Aznar said.

Presenting the plan Friday, Ibarretxe told the regional parliament in Vitoria that the new statute would be based on the "respect for the right of the Basque people to decide their own future".

Ibarretxe, of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV -- in power in Vitoria since 1980), first drafted the plan a year ago.

He also revealed Friday that the Basque government was set to approve the project on October 25 and that it would be put to a vote in the regional parliament in September 2004.

If the plan were to succeed, Euskadi, the Basque name for the region in the country's north, would be freely associated with the remainder of Spain by the will of its inhabitants rather than by the current constitutional arrangement that granted the region its autonomy, under the so-called 1979 Statute of Guernica.

Ibarretxe has said that as the region's lehendakari or president, he would seek to ensure that the referendum would go ahead with an "absence of violence".

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Spain-Basques

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This article is Copyright 2003 by Agence France-Presse.

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