"We must lend credibility to irreversible, unilateral and complete disarmament"

Please find the joint communiqué below:

The political parties and trade unions that are appearing before the means of communication today wish to pass on our analysis and valuation of the situation with the announcement of ETA’s imminent disarming to public opinion.

The fulfilment of this goal would have a decisive effect on closing a stage related to the past in Basque society and politics and it would allow, whilst remembering all the victims, progress to be made in a well-founded way, towards a new time of present and future, centring on coexistence.

Disarmament is a necessary step towards peace, an essential step. Therefore, it has been a long-awaited aspiration by our organisations and by citizens in general. An irreversible, unilateral and complete disarmament, without political conditioning is a basic milestone within an ordered and final end to violence.

It is, therefore, good news and we want to lend credibility to the announcement expressed in these conditions and we hope that it will be successfully fulfilled.

Before anything else, we would like to acknowledge the work developed by people, organisations and institutions, both national and international, to ensure that this step could be taken.

From this point onwards, we, as political and trade union organisations, are responsible for overcoming the aftermath left behind after so many decades. Amongst them, disarming words, channelling our legitimate differences democratically and in a civilised manner and giving prestige to dialogue and negotiation as a way of handling disputes, also forming a challenge for the organisations that we represent.

Convinced, as we have already stated, that the correct articulation between representative Institutions, instances of verification and the representative organisations of civil society can contribute to successfully completing this disarmament process. Ratifying the commitment of our organisations with peace, we state the following reflections and requests:

We request ETA, in as short a time as possible, to carry out single act of unilateral, complete, final and verified disarmament.

We request the International Verification Commission to continue developing is good offices to complete this goal.

We value positively the implication of people and entities from civil society in their contribution to achieving this aim.

We encourage our Institutions to continue developing support initiatives towards a final disarmament act with guarantees of legality and safety and that this is monitored.

We invite the Spanish Government and the French Government to contribute to the culmination of the disarmament of ETA.

Finally, we would like to communicate that our organisations may be represented, if so wished and in the manner established, at the act convened for the afternoon of the 8th of April in Baiona, along with a wide representation of the political and trade union plurality of France and the Northern Basque Country.