Good News or Bad News?

I don't know if this is good news of bad news, but it happened and you can read it at Yahoo! News.

Spain's Basque government vows to push regional autonomy one step further

2 hours, 7 minutes ago Add World - AFP to My Yahoo!

VITORIA, Spain (AFP) - Spain's autonomous Basque government vowed to pursue a controversial plan to change the region's political status to one of "free association" with the rest of the country, prompting furious criticism from Madrid.

The president of the Basque government, Juan Jose Ibarretxe, told the regional parliament in Vitoria that the "new statute of free association" -- which essentially pushes autonomy one step further -- would be based on the "respect for the right of the Basque people to decide their own future".

He also offered to debate the issue with Madrid, but stressed that the Basque government intends to put the plan to a referendum regardless of the outcome of its talks with the central government.

Should Ibarretxe's project 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.

But the plan will have to run the gauntlet of furious opposition from a right-wing Spanish government which derided it as "separatist and secessionist."

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

After that, the Basque government would seek to hold six months of talks with the central government in Madrid with a view to modifying the region's autonomous status.

In Madrid, the conservative government of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar immediately warned it would oppose the plan, insisting that it "seeks to break apart the political and constitutional framework" of Spain, said government spokesman Eduardo Zaplana.

Zaplana insisted the Basque region already enjoyed "a level of autonomy unknown in Europe."

He described the plan as "legally impossible (to implement) in Spain as in Europe" and said the government was "categorically opposed" to the whole idea.

He warned that Madrid, which believes the plan is a move towards full independence, would go through the courts if necessary to knock down any proposals that did not abide by the Spanish constitution.

Ibarretxe meanwhile 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" and "without exclusion".

Alluding to the violence by armed separatist group ETA, whose commandos have killed about 800 people in the past 35 years, Ibarretxe said he wanted to cut out "a cancer that does terrible harm to the Basque image throughout the world."

He added that the plan "is decisively going to contribute to slamming the door on violence and expel ETA from our lives."

Ibarretxe's reference to an all-embracing vote was seen as a reference to the banning earlier this year by the Spanish judiciary of Batasuna, ETA's political mouthpiece.

Ibarretxe said last year's sinking of the Prestige oil tanker off northern Spain, a catastrophe that polluted the whole of the north coast, as well as the war in Iraq -- supported by Madrid but not by the Spanish population at large -- justified his mission to give the Basques greater control over their own affairs.

He called both issues "two significant examples of the great chasm, the divorce that exists between Basque society and the Spanish government.

"The enthusiastic support of the Spanish government for the war against Iraq ... is an illegitimate, unjust and erroneous decision ... adopted without United Nations approval, against our European allies and against the will of Basque society," Ibarretxe charged.

A few things though, as usual the reporter sins of siding with the oppresor, first of all, Batasuna is accused of being ETA's mouth piece, this is something that neither one of the two formations has ever proclaimed, therefore for the time being, and since you are innocent until proven guilty, the reporter (if he was a true journalist of course) should say something like "Batasuna, the alleged mouthpiece...".

Second, the Basque plea for self determination is not illegal, it is actually consecrated by the UN charter that defends the right of any people on the earth to seek their self determination, the reporter fails to explain that to a public that may not understand that artificial states are bound to fragment sooner or later, like for example Yugoslavia.

Third, the name of the Basque city is Gazteiz, Vitoria is the way the invaders call it, you would think that out of respect the reporter would use the right name.

Remember, the guys that got upset are the same ones who not too long ago denied the Holocaust, just in case you feel like siding with them.

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