bombings and assassinations of Spanish Government officials, especially security and military forces, politicians, and judicial figures. ETA finances its activities through kidnappings, robberies, and extortion. The group has killed more than 800 persons since it began lethal attacks in the early 1960s. In November 1999, ETA broke its "unilateral and indefinite" cease fire and began an assassination and bombing campaign that killed 23 individuals and wounded scores more by the end of 2000 ("Basque" 2).
The same report holds that the ETA is primarily funded from external sources, all with associations to communism or terrorism: Libya, Lebanon, Nicaragua, Cuba, and the Irish Republican Army ("Basque" 2).
This portrait stands in stark contrast to most other sources, in terms of the politics, the tactics, and the long-term goals of the ETA. Even Kurlansky, who describes the ETA in sometimes harsh terms, acknowledges a flexibility in the group's policy which the first analysis ignores: "European governments accept without question the Spanish government line that ETA, whose primary demand for several decades has been negotiation, refuses to negotiate" (Kurlansky 298).
It is true that the group came to the attention of the Spanish government through violence, but it is also true that the ETA does continue to seek negotiation. Another question is what the negotiation should concern, and whether the demands of the ETA are tru
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