Sarkzoy vows to eradicate separatist bases

FRANCE: President Nicolas Sarkozy promised Tuesday during a state funeral for a police officer killed by alleged Basque separatist group ETA members to eradicate all of the organization’s bases in France.

“We will eliminate all the bases of ETA in France one by one. We are going to flush out them one by one and destroy all supporters of this terrorist organization,” Sarkozy said during the funeral.

Spain and France “will never allow themselves be intimidated by terrorism,” Sarkozy said, noting that “33 members of ETA were arrested in 2009 in France.”

Jean-Serge Nerine, a 52-year-old police officer, was killed March 16 during a shootout with suspected ETA militants south of Paris. Nerine was named Chevalier of the Legion of Honor by a decree published Tuesday in the Official Journal.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero also attended the ceremony with his Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba on behalf of the Spanish government.

ETA, an armed Basque nationalist and separatist organization, was founded in 1959 and claimed to have evolved in a series of terrorist attacks that has killed more than 825 people since the late 1960s.

Spanish and French authorities, as well as the European Union and the United States, have defined the separatist group, which is seeking an independent Basque homeland in northern Spain and southwestern France, as “terrorists.”

More than 700 members of the organization are reportedly incarcerated in prisons in Spain, France, and other countries. PARIS, Wednesday, Xinhua