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Kidnapping on mind

ETA plans two major attacks in 2010, police report says

Staff

12/30/2009

The band could have two commands ready to act against a police station or a ministry, according to a text obtained by Basque radio station.

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Basque armed group ETA plans to conduct&' || 'nbsp; two major attacks and a kidnapping of a relevant charge in 2010, according to a police report which Radio Euskadi has obtained.

The document reveals that the band could be working through two operational commands which could be ready to act.

As the text says, one of those attacks would be committed against a police station or a ministry of the Spanish government, probably with a car bomb.

Security forces believe ETA has been seriously&' || 'nbsp; weakened by hundreds of arrests in recent years in France and Spain but that it is still capable of inflicting considerable damage.

Speaking in the Basque Country on Monday, Spain''s Interior Minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba said Spain''s security forces would be on particular alert against ETA during his country''s term as EU president. "ETA cannot keep itself out of these international settings," he said.

He also said the attack could include a kidnapping to get international publicity. Its most well-known kidnapping was in 1997 when it took and shot Miguel Ángel Blanco, a local politician in Ermua, Biscay, after a 48-hour ultimatum to the Spanish government to transfer all ETA prisoners throughout Spain to prisons in the Basque Country.

The last Basque peace process started in March 2006 but ended less than a year later with an ETA bomb at Madrid airport which killed two people.

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