Spain's Basque separatist group ETA should surrender and dissolve itself, Spanish Deputy Premier and the Interior minister, Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said on Monday, following ETA's declaration of the permanent ceasefire.
Earlier on Monday ETA has declared a permanent and total ceasefire which will be internationally confirmed.
The nationalist group said it was set to put an end to the armed confrontation, as it was necessary to find "a fair and democratic solution from the conflict."
"There is nothing new in ETA's statement, the same rhetoric, the same expressions, the same strategy. Obviously, ETA claims to set a price for the end of the violence. We are not going to pay," Rubalcaba said.
"It is not the bad news, it is not just the kind of news we are waiting for," Rubalcaba went on.
ETA, founded in 1959, is recognized as a terrorist organization by the European Union and the United States. The group is known to have killed over 850 people in the past 50 years while fighting for an independent Basque state.
ETA has broken several ceasefires in the past, most recently in 2006 with a deadly bomb attack at the Madrid Barajas international airport.
The latest statement is a confirmation to the ceasefire announced by the group in September 2010, in which it said it wished to use "peaceful, democratic means" to achieve its aims but failed to specify whether it was permanent.
MADRID, January 10 (RIA Novosti)
