Excuse me, but I'm pretty amazed by your statements Hip Priest...

ETA members are terrorists. Terrorism is the succession of violent acts made in order to make people be terrified. Therefore, when an ETA member kills a journalist, a councilmen, a local policeman, a national policeman, a soldier, a pregnant mother, a kid, a hairdresser, a cooker, a chofeur, a senator, a judge (all of these is true) or any other human being in order to terrify spaniards and force the spanish government to recognize an independent Basque Country (not to say the ridicolous claim over the French Department of the Western Pyrenees and Navarre) they are committing terrorism acts. Not to speak about coarsion, extorsion, sabotages, bribery, menaces, kidnapping and breaking of many more laws and Human Rights.

As for the suposed political conflict: The Basque Country has the most developed autonomy perhaps of all the world. In fact, they are more autonomous than a german federal lander, a US federal state, or even than Puerto Rico itself. Basques voted the referendum for the 1978 Constitution, and they voted in their majority (more than 75%) for it (as the rest of Spain).

As for justifying their terrorism with peregrine arguments such as "Hey, if they were independent and the government was more sensible with them they would stop killing..." let me make you a question. If I kick you, blame on you for not being kind with me?

Therefore we should infere that anyone who is enough stupid to take a pistol and kill someone has some kind of right? Should USA negotiate with Osama Ben Laden? Perhaps Spain should negotiate the inmediate independence of the Basque Country and Navarre, leaving that majority of basques and navarros who don't want it be ruled by a stalinist government.

And last but not least, the comparation between IRA and ETA is a bad joke...
IRA members are terrorists of course, and have no right to kill anyone, but remember that Northern Ireland had no autonomy until some years ago, no parlament, the "catholics" were not allowed to be policemen and the royal army was present in every part of northern irish life.

Fernando