PARIS, Jan 10: President Nicolas Sarkozy and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero pledged on Thursday to join forces to fight Basque separatist violence, as well as promote Europe-wide migration controls and the emergence of a Mediterranean Union.

Holding their first top-level meeting since Sarkozy’s election last May, the French and Spanish leaders oversaw the formal creation of a special police unit tasked with rooting out the armed Basque group ETA.

“France will always be at the side of the Spanish democracy faced with the cancer of terrorism,” Sarkozy told a press conference following closed-door summit talks at the Elysee presidential palace.

Relations between France and Spain have been buoyed by Sarkozy’s backing for Madrid’s hard line against ETA, considered a terrorist group by the European Union and the United States.—AFP