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Spain's attorney general denied Saturday that hopes for peace in the troubled Basque region have been hurt by a 10-year jail term handed down against a prominent separatist leader who has renounced violence by the militant group ETA.

Candido Conde-Pumpido said in a radio interview that Friday's terrorism conviction of Arnaldo Otegi, on charges of being part of ETA's leadership, was appropriate "and does not introduce any distortion'' in Spain's efforts to end Europe's last major armed militancy.

The National Court found Otegi guilty of trying to resurrect ETA's banned political wing, Batasuna, which was outlawed by the Supreme Court in 2003 on grounds it is part of the militant group.

Over the past decade Otegi has been the most high-profile pro-independence Basque nationalist among those who have refused to condemn ETA. But over the past two years he and many in his movement have publicly rejected violence -although not formally condemned ETA itself- as the way to achieve Basque independence, saying it must be done peacefully and democratically.

Pro-independence parties condemned Otegi's conviction as an obstacle in the path to ending the conflict. A new coalition called Bildu labeled it “an aberration to destabilize the new political scenario.”

During the trial leading to Friday's conviction Otegi went so far as to say ETA “has no place, and is a hindrance” to peace. But he stopped short of calling on it to dissolve.

Otegi served 15 months in jail for an ETA-related offense and was released in 2008, only to be arrested in 2009 over the current case. He was charged with trying to form an organization that would replace Batasuna.

Otegi argued it was this organization that persuaded the pro-ETA Basque separatist community to reject violence. But the court ruled Otegi was in fact acting on orders from ETA to regroup pro-independence forces into a new political tool for ETA.

The attorney general said Otegi might have been acquitted had he distanced himself completely from ETA by calling on it to lay down arms and dissolve.

But as Otegi did not say this, Conde-Pumpido argued, “from a legal standpoint ETA continues to be a permanent threat and certainly its leaders have to be convicted.”