Madrid reacted cautiously after the Basque separatist group ETA declared a previously announced

cease-fire to be permanent. ETA, however, has broken several cease-fires in the past, and Spanish

Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero said a peace process could not begin until the group

agreed to disarm and dissolve. The militant group is blamed for more than 850 deaths in the course of its

50-year campaign to carve out an independent ethnic-Basque homeland from parts of Spain and France.