MADRID, Sept 5: Basque separatist fighters ETA declared a ceasefire on Sunday in their flagging 42-year campaign of bombing and shooting for a homeland independent of Spain.

ETA, blamed for the deaths of 829 people, said it decided several months ago that it “will not carry out armed offensive actions”. It vowed instead to seek a democratic resolution.

It did not say if the ceasefire was temporary or permanent.

ETA made the announcement in a video sent to the BBC and pro-independence Basque daily Gara, showing three people in berets and yellow hoods sitting at a table flanked by Basque flags and with an ETA symbol on the wall behind.

Listed as a terrorist group by the United States and European Union, ETA has not staged an attack on Spanish soil since August 2009, and the authorities in Spain and France have arrested much of its top leadership.

“ETA reaffirms its commitment to finding a democratic solution to the conflict,” said a woman sitting in the centre.

“In its commitment to a democratic process to decide freely and democratically our future, through dialogue and negotiations, ETA is prepared today as yesterday to agree to the minimum democratic conditions necessary to put in motion a democratic process, if the Spanish government is willing.”

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's government reacted cautiously, after taking a political pounding when ETA broke its last ceasefire in 2006 and bombed Madrid's main airport.

The interior ministry was still examining the declaration, a spokesman said. The ministry had spoken to parliamentary groups including the opposition Partido Popular, he said.

Government officials were quoted in El Pais newspaper as saying the declaration was a move in the right direction but ETA still had to definitively abandon the armed struggle.

The paper quoted unidentified anti-terrorist sources as saying the ETA statement did not go far enough. “They do not announce the surrender of weapons nor the end of violence; it is not enough,” one source was quoted as saying.

ETA, which was founded on July 31, 1959, had been under pressure from its political allies to declare a truce.—AFP