Spanish Prime Minister Jose Zapatero came to office on the backlash against his predecessor for blaming the Basque separatist group ETA for the 3/11 Madrid bombings in 2004. After his election, he pulled Spain out of the Iraq coalition and then announced that he would honor the ETA cease-fire and negotiate with the Basques. However, after ETA killed two people in a bombing at the airport in Madrid, Zapatero found himself having to apologize for his naivete:

"All Spaniards heard me say on December 29 that I had the conviction that things were better for us than five years ago and that in a year's time things would be even better," Mr Zapatero told a special session of the Spanish parliament.

"Although it is not frequent among public leaders, I want to recognize the clear mistake I made before all Spanish citizens."

Despite allegations that he had been "fooled" by Eta, he insisted that he had been right to seek negotiations with the terrorist group after they declared a permanent ceasefire last March. "I did what most Spaniards wanted – to try to use the truce to end the violence," he said.

His opposition took a less charitable view of Zapatero's actions. Mariano Rajoy scoffed at the notion that Zapatero's embrace of negotiations was what Spaniards wanted:

Ignoring Mr Zapatero's calls for political unity in dealing with Eta, the leader of the opposition wasted no time in attacking him. "What is your word worth after all this?" Mariano Rajoy asked during the debate. "You have been fooled by a pack of murderers."

He reiterated his criticism of the premier's peace initiative with the words: "You don't negotiate with terrorism. Either you defeat it or you suffer from it."

Zapatero wants to find national unity in determining how to address the Basque terrorists, but the PP has made it clear that they will not endorse Zapatero's approach. The PM has apparently decided against further negotiations, but he has so far not offered any other ideas. His sole position seems to be that a refusal to negotiate is as far as he's willing to go to stop ETA.

That obviously won't address the problem. Terrorists do not bomb people in order to gain an edge at the bargaining table. They terrorize people in order to eliminate the need for bargains and force their opponents to skip right to capitulation, preferably as quickly as possible. Zapatero has already demonstrated a talent for this in his hasty exit from Iraq. He taught the terrorists a lesson -- that Spain would retreat from fighting terrorism if attacked. ETA figured it could get Zapatero to cave with a little more violence, and while he hasn't done that yet, he's still not talking about taking action against the group that just killed two of his countrymen and attacked his nation's transportation system.

The biggest laugh of the entire story comes from ETA, however. After setting off the bomb and murdering two Spaniards, the Basques released a statement that claimed no intent to kill despite planting a bomb in a busy airport --- and that it still considered its cease-fire to remain in effect. It sounds like the ETA has taken lessons from the Palestinians in the elastic definition of a cease-fire which includes all sorts of violence from one's own group but excludes any effort at counterterrorism by the government they target.

Spain has had to learn more than once that negotiating with terrorists only produces more terrorism. In fact, when a nation retreats from one set of terrorists, it emboldens other terrorists of completely different affiliations. The only way to beat terrorism is to ensure that it provides absolutely no rewards to the terrorists, and that means shutting off all political contact with them. Perhaps the Spanish opposition can return to office to re-implement that strategy shortly.

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Tracked on January 16, 2007 11:41 AM