ETA terrorists go green.....

Next, we'll be seeing the greening of Al-qaeda...

In the Herriko Taberna, a bar in Bilbao's working-class area of Santutxu, a new picture hangs on the wall this weekend: the face belongs to Garikoitz Aspiazu, a local boy who was, police claim, the military chief of the Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, the armed Basque nationalist group long known to the world as Eta. In a necklace and a pink T-shirt, Aspiazu, linked to at least four deaths, smiles out at the drinkers, the slices of tortilla, the posters and the prizes for the Christmas raffle. 'A very good guy,' said Josu Telleria, who helps run the bar. 'We played football together. He was a great striker.'

Aspiazu, who was arrested a month ago, is lost to the struggle for the time being. But there are plenty of others to carry on the fight. In the same bar Carlos Ruiz, a former steelworker and member of a campaigning group close to the extremist Basque nationalists, argues that the violent confrontation with Madrid stems from its refusal to allow the Basques to decide their own future.

'No one wants the deaths,' he said, 'but when there is a wall and there is no way round it, then there are people who choose violence.'

This is standard talk from an Eta sympathiser, but the current target of the group's activities is anything but conventional. The organisation to which Ruiz belongs specialises in environmental campaigning. And this year Eta has declared war on a high-speed rail link to be built through the heart of some of the most beautiful countryside in Europe. Two weeks ago the new cause claimed its first victim - Ignacio Uría, 71, a businessman shot dead by two Eta gunmen as punishment for his involvement in the railway project. Eta has gone green, in characteristically deadly fashion.