New Basque leftist party Sortu files charter with Interior Ministry

Sponsors of a new Basque nationalist left-wing party that goes under the name of Sortu and rejects violence by the armed Basque group ETA filed the charter of the new party Wednesday with the Spanish Interior Ministry in Madrid.

Spain''s attorney general''s office will now determine if legal status can be granted to the new party within the next 20 days. The government can allow the party to stand or challenge it and ask prosecutors to investigate. Any decision on declaring the party illegal is ultimately up to a special section of the Supreme Court.

Eight of the ten sponsors of the new formation took part in a conference in Madrid to present the party''s charter together with Sinn Fein member Alex Maskey and Bill Bowring, Chair of the International Steering Committee of the European Human Rights Advocacy Centre.

They also gave a conference in Bilbao on Tuesday morning to present the new party. They said they reject ETA violence "without hesitation" and assured that they would not be "swallowed up". They defended the creation of a Basque state "within a European Union framework, via exclusively peaceful and political channels" and rejected "categorically and without hesitation" all violence "including that of ETA."

Furthermore, they stressed their right to be legal, denied that they are "a continuation" of any of the previous abertzale organisations (such as Batasuna) and indicated that they would shortly be deciding the structures on which their statutes would be based.

The ten sponsors are: UPV-EHU professor Iñaki Zabaleta; teachers Xabier Artola and Ester Hernandorena; Doctor of Geology, Maider Etxebarria; social worker, María Jesús Vélez; solicitor, José María Compains; Director of the Euskaltegi, Karmele Agirregabiria; trade unionist, Edu Burgos; administrator Sonia Respaldiza and Raquel Jausoro.