News of ETA ceasefire reverberates in international press

ETA''s decision to announce a "permanent, general and verifiable" ceasefire on Monday has been echoed in the international press and made it onto the front page of newspapers in various countries.

In the French press, the announcement took up half the front page of the online edition of Le Figaro. According to the daily, "the Basque separatist organisation assures that this time the ceasefire will be verifiable by an international community. The Spanish government, disappointed, was hoping for more than a definitive renunciation of the armed struggle".

The news did not make the front news of Le Monde, but sixth position of its European section where it says: "the Basque organisation proposes ''a permanent and general ceasefire, verifiable by the international community''".

In the German press, neither of the country''s main publications Bild or Die Zeit featured the story in their online versions.

The item was given a lot of prominence in the UK press. In The Guardian, half of the front page featured the news of ETA''s announcement: "Basque separatists call a permanent halt to hostilities, which will be verified by international mediators".

At the BBC, the main news item of their European front page was that "Basque separatists ETA announce a permanent ceasefire in their struggle for independence from Spain, but the Spanish government has downplayed the declaration".

The Irish Times, in one of the most prominent items of its World section, quoted Zapatero as saying that ETA''s declaration was "insufficient".

In Italian daily Il Corriere della Sera, half of the front page was taken up with the news of ETA''s announcement of a "permanent, general and verifiable ceasefire": "The separatist Basque group has permanently renounced arms. This is the latest is a series of steps towards a détente. In a year and a half, no attacks have been carried out on Spanish territory".

In the US, news corporation CNN published the news as one of its most important items of the day: "ETA announces a permanent ceasefire". A sharp contrast with the New York Times, which did not feature the news on any of its principle pages.

The Wall Street Journal carried the news on half of its main European page. The publication explained that the "Basque armed separatist group ETA on Monday declared its intention to permanently lay down arms but the Spanish Government rejected the announcement".

In South America, the international pages of Clarín read "ETA announces a new truce: firm rejection by Zapatero".

Venezuala''s El Nacional features the videoed announcement on its webpage and in Mexico''s Universal, the headline read that "ETA gave two different versions of the statement because whoever read it in Spanish doesn''t understand Basque". The Mexican daily highlighted the fact that "David Plá read the latest statement in Spanish; the woman who read in Basque could be either Iratxe Sorzabal or Izaskun Lesaka".