Spanish anti-terror pact fails to win broad-based support

Catalan Nationalist leader Jordi Pujol said his party would not join the pact against extremism since the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) had been excluded from the alliance.

The communist United Left (IU) said it would join the pact only on condition that the document inked by the Popular Party and the Socialists was amended, a demand which PSOE leader Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero vehemently rejected.

A 45-year-old councillor in the town of Viladecavalls near Barcelona earlier this month become the latest victim of terror attacks blamed on the Basque ETA separatists.

Francisco Cano, the only representative of the Popular Party on the Viladecavalls council, died of injuries he suffered when a bomb bomb went off under his van.

His death brought to 22 the number of people ETA has been accused of killing since the start of this year, five of them members of the PP. ETA has stepped up its attacks since ending a 14-month ceasefire last December.

On Friday 150,000 people took to the streets of Terrassa, a town of 200,000 inhabitants, in a mass protest against the rule of terror.

The bishops of the Basque provincial towns of Vitoria, Bilbao and San Sebastian as well as of Pamplona in the neighbouring region of Navarra in an unprecedented move called for a peace march and a prayer on January 13.

The Catholic church has in the past remained mute in the conflict in the Basque region because of the complex political situation and fears of causing a rift among believers.

(kil/dpa)