France Says Arrests New ETA Military Leader

Spanish media named the most senior man arrested on Monday as Aitziol Iriondo, and one of the others as Eneko Zarrabeitia.

French police have arrested three suspected members of the Basque separatist organisation ETA including one who is believed to be the new military leader of the group, the French government said on Monday.

The man suspected of being ETA's previous military chief, who was wanted in connection with the bombing of Madrid airport in 2006, was arrested in France last month.

"Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie ... congratulates the police ... who arrested three members of the Basque terrorist organisation ETA, including one who has already been identified as Balak, the presumed successor to Txeroki as the military head of ETA," Alliot-Marie's office said in a statement.

Balak is the name used by French police for the suspect named by Spanish authorities as Aitzol Iriondo. The three were armed but arrested peacefully near Bagneres-de-Bigorre in southwestern France. They have been transferred to Bayonne.

Txeroki (Cherokee) is the alias for Garikoitz Aspiazu Rubina who was arrested near the Spanish border last month.

Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba told a news conference in Madrid that Iriondo, 31, was "in all probability" responsible for the killing of two Spanish undercover policemen in the French seaside town of Capbreton in December 2007.

Rubalcaba added that the other two arrested men were believed to be Eneko Zarrabeitia and Aitor Artetxe, who had fled to France to avoid capture. He said police would continue to track down other ETA members.

"I don't know if any terrorist is now thinking of replacing Aitzol Iriondo. What I can guarantee is that we will be looking for him as of right now, and so on, until it is over," he said.

Txeroki was also suspected in the Capbreton case but French police are no longer investigating him in connection with the incident but are pursuing him for leading a terrorist organisation.

Monday's arrests follow the Dec. 3 fatal shooting of a 71-year-old businessman in the Basque town of Azpeitia, which the Spanish government blamed on ETA.

Rubalcaba said that "it is not risky to say" that either Txeroki or Iriondo was responsible for the killing.

Spanish authorities say ETA has been reduced to a relatively small number of fighters after a series of arrests of senior figures. But it has continued to carry out regular bombings.

ETA began its violent campaign for the independence of traditional Basque territories in northern Spain and southwest France in the late years of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco in the 1960s, and has killed more than 800 people in four decades.