The armed Basque separatist group ETA said on Saturday it is prepared to take "new steps" to resolve a four-decade conflict over an independent Basque state, but stopped short of speaking of a truce.
In a statement read out on the Basque government radio station, ETA said it was time to make "new steps" but it was not possible for "only one side to do it."
"The time has come to make firm commitments and important decisions on the future of the Basque people, by moving from talk to action and by showing audacity," the group said.
It said dialogue and negotiation were the "only ways to resolve the conflict," echoing a call for a political solution from its banned political arm Batasuna in 2004.
Speculation has been rife for days that ETA was on the verge of announcing a ceasefire in its struggle, during which it has been blamed for taking 800 lives.
Spain's ruling Socialist Party was quick to dismiss the statement, saying it changed "absolutely nothing" and demanding ETA "definitively abandon violence," according to the Europa Press agency.
The Spanish government said it was still waiting for ETA to "renounce totally and definitively all recourse to arms."
ETA also appears to have rejected offers to expand the statute on Basque autonomy formulated by the ruling Socialists for the Basque regional government, which is controlled by the moderate Nationalist Basque Party (PNV).
The PNV on Saturday responded to ETA's communique by saying it would not bow to any pressure, reminding the separatists that the only thing the Basque people were waiting for was "a definite end to violence."
ETA has not launched any fatal attacks since May 2003 but only on Tuesday it detonated a car bomb which caused material damage in a disco carpark.
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has in recent months begun openly to speak about a "peace process."
He has expressed the opinion on several occasions that ETA had reached "the beginning of the end," almost three years after its last fatal attack.
Zapatero has hinted the government has "information" of a sea change in Basque nationalist thinking on whether violence can achieve political goals, despite low-level attacks such as Tuesday's car bombing.
The opposition conservative Popular Party said the government "must guard against speculation which can only lead to frustration," said a party spokesman in the Basque region, Leopoldo Barreda, who considered that the ETA communique said "nothing new."
Also on Saturday, chief state prosecutor Candido Conde-Pumpido told the Cadena-Sur radio station the Batasuna party, illegal since 2003, "could become legal again ... if violence has vanished."
"Unquestionably a new political force can make its appearance which renounces violence, says clearly that its political activities rule out violence and asks to be legalized," he said, suggesting that Batasuna would have to adopt a new name.
Batasuna was banned in March 2003 because of its links with ETA. More than 90 percent of Spanish parliamentarians backed the ban.
RSS