BRUSSELS, (AFP) – European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana yesterday welcomed the announcement of a permanent ceasefire by the armed Basque separatist group ETA, ending nearly four decades of violence.

“The declaration seems to me to be good news for the whole Spanish people and for all Europeans,” he told reporters in Brussels, after the announcement which met a key condition for talks with the Spanish government.

Solana, a former Spanish foreign minister, added that he had spoken with nearly all governments of the 25-nation EU, and they had voiced satisfaction with the ETA decision and support for the Spanish government.

ETA has been blamed for more than 800 deaths in its four-decade campaign to create an independent state covering Spain’s northern Basque region and parts of southwestern France.

Meantime, former Spanish leader Jose Maria Aznar slammed the Socialist government as “defeatist” in its peace strategy for the troubled Basque region, as armed separatist group ETA announced a permanent ceasefire.

“As the government harks back to its defeatist vision of dealing with the terrorists, the PP (the conservative Popular Party which Aznar led as prime minister until a 2004 election defeat) is showing what lies ahead,” he said.

“That is, the certain and demonstrated possibility that our democracy is winning definitively the encounter with those who for 40 years have wanted to do away with it,” said Aznar at a book presentation.

He was speaking from a prepared text just minutes after three hooded figures read out a statement broadcast on Basque television announcing a “permanent ceasefire” would take effect from Friday.

Aznar’s government of 1996-2004 entered what proved to be abortive talks with ETA in 1998.

Mariano Rajoy, who succeeded Aznar as PP leader shortly before the party’s March 2004 election defeat, for his part said he viewed the announcement as merely a “pause,” not “a renunciation” of violence.

“The only important statement which the terrorist organisation ETA can broadcast to the whole of Spanish society is the announcement of its dissolution and the end of its criminal activities.

“This has not happened,” Rajoy observed.