Batasuna drew up new party charter without ETA agreement

The radical separatists of ETA's outlawed political wing, Batasuna, said they did not work with the terrorist group to draft the charter of a new party they registered last Wednesday in the hope of being legalized in time for local May elections. But although ETA may not have known the full content of the statutes of Sortu, as the aspiring party is named, it was aware that the text would contain an explicit rejection of armed violence - a first for Batasuna circles.

Sortu sources also confirmed that Basque nationalist parties - PNV, Eusko Alkartasuna and Aralar - as well as the Basque Socialist Party - in power since 2009 - knew the new party's statues would reject violence.

The decision to distance itself from ETA's methods is part of a new strategy approved earlier this year by a majority of Batasuna supporters. It calls for "strictly democratic and peaceful methods."

Batasuna was outlawed in 2003 by a Party Law that made it a requirement for political parties to explicitly reject violence as a means to achieve political aims. In the regional elections of 2009, its blank-vote campaign to demonstrate popular support for radical separatism was much less successful than it had hoped.

The Spanish courts will now have to decide whether Sortu meets the criteria to become a legal party and run in local elections on May 22.