Bomb not start of ETA campaign-Spanish law official

MADRID, Jan 2 (Reuters) Spain does not face a new ETA bombing campaign despite Saturday's Madrid airport car bomb which ended nine months of ceasefire by the Basque separatist group, the attorney general was today quoted as saying.

Rescuers were still searching for the bodies of two men believed killed in the attack, but the blast does not reverse the decline that pushed ETA into seeking peace talks, Candido Conde-Pumpido told the newspaper El Mundo.

''I think that ETA's time of terrorism has run out for ever and the situation is irreversible. I think ETA has been defeated, and we are at its funeral,'' Conde-Pumpido said.

''That doesn't mean we can't have tragedies or setbacks, like the Barajas bomb,'' he said, referring to the huge car bomb which wrecked a multi-storey carpark at the ultra-modern Terminal Four of Madrid's Barajas airport on Saturday.

The bombing led Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to suspend all efforts to seek dialogue with ETA, ending a peace process he had started in June after the guerrillas declared a ceasefire in March.

ETA's political ally Batasuna, a party banned for its links to the guerrillas, insisted it still wanted to negotiate peace -- giving rise to suspicions that ETA saw its bomb as a negotiating tool rather than a return to war.

Rescuers used heavy lifting equipment today to move massive concrete slabs which crushed cars in which they believe two Ecuadorean immigrants had been sleeping at the time of the blast as they waited for relatives to fly in.

ETA killed over 800 people in four decades of violent struggle for independence for the Basque Country in northern Spain and southwest France. Its fight began during the Franco dictatorship when the Basque language and culture were suppressed but, in today's democratic Spain, only a minority of Basques want full independence, according to polls.

In recent years, Spanish and French police arrested hundreds of suspected guerrillas, gutting the operational ability of a group which never reached the critical mass of public support it needed to generate momentum towards independence.

But Basque separatists have been frustrated that the ceasefire did not lead to an easing of police pressure on ETA or the transfer of guerrilla prisoners to jails nearer their homes. They were also angered at the continuing ban on Batasuna.

''Ultimately they would prefer the peaceful road, not to be letting off car bombs, but they feel that in the circumstances they have been betrayed,'' said Alec Reid, an Irish priest who has been involved with peace efforts in both the Basque Country and Northern Ireland.

''I am certain that the peace process will go ahead at the end of the day, with the Lord's help,'' he told Reuters by telephone, adding that Saturday's bomb reminded him of when the IRA broke a ceasefire in 1996 before returning to talks.

Reuters SY GC1734