The Loiola Meetings

Well well well, what Zapatero and Ibarretxe have been denying for the last few months. This article comest to us via EITb:

Nationalists, Socialists, Batasuna almost signed deal during truce

According to information EiTB accessed, the three parties held 11 meetings at the Sanctuary of Loiola from Sep to Nov 2006, a few months after ETA declared a cease-fire, in an attempt to agree on political normalisation.

The Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), the Socialist Party (PSE) and outlawed Batasuna were on the point of reaching an agreement in November within the framework of the talks held following ETA's cease-fire declaration.

The agreement contemplated the creation of two dialogue tables, one in Navarre and another in the Basque Autonomous Region, and their main target would be to reach an agreement on political normalisation.

According to information gathered in a document on PNV's internal assemblies the Basque Communications group EiTB accessed, the contents, calendar and methodology of the tables were already defined in a text. The agreement came to nothing, according to the document, because Batasuna suggested the modification of two core points, and PNV and the Socialist Party didn't accept so.

Eleven meetings, all of them at the Sanctuary of Loiola, from September to November 2006. The aim was to reach an agreement to constitute two parties' tables: one in the Basque Autonomous Region and another in Navarre following this year's local and provincial elections. Those tables would set a definitive agreement for political normalisation.

The only copy of the agreement signed by the three political parties would be taken to the Vatican, as EiTB could know. The negotiators in the meetings were Josu Jon Imaz and Iñigo Urkullu for the PNV, Jesus Egiguren and Rodolfo Ares, sometimes Jose Antonio Pastor, for the PSE, and Arnaldo Otegi, Rufi Etxebarria and Arantza Santesteban or Olatz Doñabeitia for Batasuna.

On October 31 last year, PNV, PSE and Batasuna defined a document entitled "Foundations for dialogue and political agreement." There the national identity of the Basque Country was recognised, it defended that Spanish State institutions must respect the decisions taken by Basque citizenship on their political future, and guaranteed Basque citizens' rights would be gathered in international judicial regulations.

Likewise, it undertook to promote the creation of a common institutional body for the four Basque territories within the Spanish State with executive and legislative regulations, and judicial agreements voted in a referendum would be incorporated.

There was one more deal, furthermore: holding a conference for peace and dialogue in December organised by the Basque Studies Society Eusko Ikaskuntza that would be the starting point to form the tables.

Furthermore, in January 2007 a delegation of the Socialist Party of Navarre would have joined the negotiating commission. In summer the tables would have been constituted, and in two years the agreements reached would have been ready for their legislative ratification and referendum. According to the document, the problem came up in November, when Batasuna shattered the advances as it suggested important modifications of the agreements reached.

Even if the PNV attempted a middle-way suggestion, the agreement was not possible. The last meeting took place on November 15.

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