Thierry's minutes: Civil Guard report reveals ETA's take on government talks

On May 20, 2008, the Civil Guard detained Francisco Javier López Peña, in Burdeos, France. Also known as Thierry, he was the head of Basque terrorist group ETA's military wing, and took part in talks with the government between the summer of 2006 and May of 2007, with the aim of reaching an agreement to bring to an end ETA's decades-long campaign for an independent Basque Country. At the time of his arrest, Thierry was in possession of his minutes of those meetings, which were seized by the Civil Guard.

EL PAÍS has had access to a report by the Civil Guard, based on those minutes, which pieces together the ETA boss' version of the conversations with the government, which served to set the conditions for dialogue between the two parties. The beginning of the end of that dialogue came with a bomb attack carried out by ETA at Madrid's T4 airport terminal in 2006, in which two Ecuadorian immigrants died.

Thierry's minutes include details of the concessions that the government made for ETA ? including apparent orders to the police and the Civil Guard to not make arrests, and to leave sick ETA convicts out of jail ? although in many cases these concessions were not made or were only partially complete.

Thierry's minutes show how the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero spoke to ETA at the same time as the Basque Socialist Party was doing the same with Batasuna, the outlawed political wing of ETA. According to Thierry's interpretation of the process, the meetings ruled out the chance of an agreement being reached between ETA and the government, given that the Socialists refused to accept that the four provinces (Navarre and the three that make up the Basque Country) could have a statute that would give them the right to decide their future.

The tension between the two parties is evident throughout the minutes, as the ETA representatives berate the government for what they interpret as a continual failure to keep its word, while the government reproaches ETA for failing to stop extortion rackets and continuing to procure arms. At one point during the talks, after the attack at Madrid's Barajas airport, one of the government representatives warns ETA that if the dialogue stalls, it would be a long time before the situation could be repeated. It was a prescient warning: ETA is now in its final death throes.

The first contact between the government and ETA took place nearly a year after Prime Minister Zapatero authorized dialogue to begin, after the terrorist group's ceasefire had been verified. What follows are extracts from a Civil Guard report based on Thierry's minutes.

July-November 2005. Groundwork. ETA is still active. It is carrying out attacks, but without killings. Zapatero has been in power for 19 months. Representatives from the group, figures close to the government and five mediators have, according to ETA, held several meetings in Geneva in July and in Oslo in November. At the first meeting in Geneva, Josu Ternera ? a wanted member of ETA and former Batasuna deputy ? is present, as well as Jesús Eguiguren, the president of the Basque Socialist Party. During these meetings, the framework of the form that ETA's ceasefire announcement will take is discussed. "The government," according to ETA, promises to "reduce the police presence at checkpoints" from the moment a ceasefire is announced, and to "accept Batasuna [which had been outlawed by the Supreme Court in 2002] in political life."

During that meeting, ETA says that it will "only use weapons when survival is at stake." The government says that the terrorists "must stop their extortion. ETA agrees to give up its so-called 'revolutionary tax'."

June 22, 2006. ETA criticizes the government for having detained Zigor Merodio (on June 1, 2006) and its extortion team on June 20. "Zapatero says that he will only talk to ETA about its dissolution," the terrorists complain. Representatives of the government admit that the process "has its problems," and that they were "not expecting pressure against the process from the [opposition] Popular Party and the Association of the Victims of Terrorism."

June 23, 2006. Private conversations. "ETA announces that the talks will stop until the government meets its guarantees." The government responds, according to ETA's version: "All the guarantees have to be met. Some guarantees don't just depend on us. There will not be arrests by the police, but we are not going to make any promises about what the judges do. Extortion letters are inadmissible."

Meeting on October 27, 2006. Robbery of pistols in France. A few days before this meeting, ETA stole 300 pistols and 50 revolvers from a warehouse in the French town of Vauvert. "If it was ETA, there will be consequences," Zapatero announced on hearing the news.

The government warns ETA: "We want an explanation about the robbery of the guns. It violates the peace, but not the process. There was an agreement on no arrests and no stealing of weapons. This is blocking political advances."

ETA: "We gave a warning about the critical situation in June and September. Ninety percent of the failure to comply is on the part of the government before the robbery. We will not accept your threats. If there are arrests, ETA will act."

Government: "Thanks to the warning at [Bar] Faisán [when a member of the police supposedly warned a member of the extortion team of an imminent raid in May 2006] there is a high-ranking member of the police charged in the case while the Socialist Party's head of security only just got away with it." [The former head of the police has been charged for the tip-off, as well as an inspector from Vitoria and the police chief in the Basque Country].