ETA detainee said to be plotting car bombing

MADRID, July 11 (Reuters) A suspected ETA rebel who was arrested at a bus station in northern Spain carrying a timer and a pistol, appeared to have been plotting a car bomb attack near a government building, the Spanish government said today.

''ETA's going to keep on trying,'' Interior Minister Alfredo Rubalcaba told a news conference a day after Aritz Arginzoniz was arrested in the northern port city of Santander.

''And we're going to keep trying to stop them,'' he said.

Giving details of Arginzoniz's arrest, Rubalcaba said: ''He was planning an attack, in the next few days, presumably in a parking area close to a government building.'' Police were seeking Arginzoniz's girlfriend, who had been spotted with him before his arrest, local media reported.

Spain has been braced for an ETA offensive since the rebels, who want independence for ancient Basque territories in northern Spain and southwestern France, officially ended a ceasefire in June.

ETA has killed more than 800 people in four decades of armed struggle dating back to the last years of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, when Basque language and culture were supressed.

Their last fatal attack was in December, when a car bomb at a Madrid airport carpark killed two Ecuadorean immigrants who were sleeping in their vehicles when telephone warnings led police to evacuate the area.

It was not until June's formal declaration of an end to the ceasefire declared in March 2006 that Spain's Socialist government gave up attempts to negotiate peace with the separatists.

REUTERS SYU PM2237