Is He For Real?

EITb published this note about the aparent compromise by the lehendakari to push forward with the Peace Process.

Here it is:

New Year's Eve Message

"I won't consider peace process or dialogue broken" - Basque PM

Basque premier Juan José Ibarretxe said Sunday the armed Basque group "ETA has spoiled us the New Year's Eve but it has not taken away our hope".

In his traditional New Year's Eve message, talking about the situation in the Basque Country after a bomb wrecked a car park at Madrid's international airport and broke a nine-month truce, Ibarretxe said neither the Basque Government nor the Basque President "will consider the peace process or the political dialogue broken." "We can not let our hope crumble," he added.

Ibarretxe expressed sympathy for the two people still missing and those hurt in the blast after the car bomb blast in Madrid's airport.

"Our aim and our responsibility is to work in order to achieve peace, as well as to reach political agreements to decide our future, among everybody, here, in the Basque Country", Ibarretxe said.

Ibarretxe added that "(we) will not move forward as we keep mistaking ETA's violence with the solution of a political conflict. It is necessary not to mistake or to make the end of ETA's violence conditional on our right to decide our own future or, on the contrary, to make our democratic right to decide conditional on the end of ETA's violence".

On this matter, the Basque president remarked "the right of the Basques to decide their future is not neither in the hands of ETA, nor of the Spanish Govt., but in the hands of the Basques themselves".

Is he going to find the courage to strenghten the ties between all Basque political parties including Batasuna?

Or will he give up to the preassure applied by the PSOE and the PP.

Lets see what kind of a lehendakari 2007 gives us.

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