The outlawed Batasuna Party is ready for a peaceful pro-independence political process, according to a document published Tuesday by Basque newspaper Gara.

Batasuna aims for a "democratic process … without any violence or external interference," Gara reports.

The party did not, however, condemn the violence of ETA, the terror group that has killed hundreds of people over the past four decades. Madrid wants Batasuna to condemn ETA's terror campaign and make ETA lay down its arms before it is ready to accept new talks.

Madrid has reason to be suspicious: The last cease-fire ended in late 2006 after only six months when ETA attacked Madrid's Barajas airport, killing two people.

Batasuna might be ready to play along simply because ETA has been considerably weakened in recent months. Intelligence cooperation with France has handed Spain's anti-terror police several successes, with four heads of ETA's military wing being arrested over the past 20 months. This summer ETA staged attacks on the holiday island of Mallorca. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero, who is steering a hard-line course against the group, after the attacks said his goal was to crush ETA.

The latest success came Monday, when French and Spanish police in a joint operation arrested two ETA terrorists in southern France, one of whom Madrid says is the political leader of the separatist group.

Aitor Elizaran Aguilar was arrested in the Brittany seaside town of Carnac together with a female suspect, Oihana San Vicente, BBC reports.

Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said Elizaran was ETA's political chief "in charge of transmitting ETA instructions" to fellow terrorists in Spain.

The arrests come three days after Spanish authorities detained Batasuna leader Arnaldo Ortegi and nine other militants suspected of trying to rebuild the banned party.

Formed under the oppressive regime of Gen. Franco, Euskadi ta Askatasuna (Basque Homeland and Freedom) for the past four decades has fought for an independent state in northern Spain and southwest France.

The violent resistance dates back to the 19th century, when religiously conservative Basques disapproved of the too liberal style of governance in Madrid, which aimed for more centralization. The Basque region as early as the Middle Ages enjoyed special privileges and autonomy, although they were not always fully honored by Madrid.

When the Francisco Franco government harshly cut some of those privileges and tried to destroy Basque nationalism, ETA formed itself as a militant resistance group aimed at ending the oppression and installing a fully independent Marxist-Leninist Basque state.

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