ETA said it hoped to "initiate a democratic process through dialogue, negotiation, and agreement" and urged the Spanish and French governments "to respond in a positive manner to this new situation."

The communique, carried in Thursday's edition of the Basque newspaper Gara, declared that now was the "time for compromise" and "to assume responsibilities."

The ETA announcement has been expected for months. The organization, which since 1968 has been responsible for taking the lives of 851 Spaniards with bombings and assassinations, has been weakened and demoralized by recent arrests and weapons seizures by security forces in both Spain and France. It recently backed a decision by its political wing, Batasuna, to negotiate with the government.

The communique followed Wednesday's ceasefire announcement by a regional television network which showed a video cassette of three men wearing white hoods and, over them, the large flat berets of the region. Behind the trio was the ETA emblem. Their statement was read out first in Basque and then in Spanish. "The aim of the ceasefire is to promote a democratic process in the Basque country and to build a new framework in which our rights as a people are recognized," the statement said. "The end of the conflict, here and now, is possible."

The announcement did indeed raise the prospect that decades of separatist violence might be close to an end. ETA has not carried out a terrorist attack involving loss of life for four years. But the threat was always there, even though its leaders are now serving long prison sentences and its strength is said to have dwindled to a few handfuls of terrorists. Meanwhile, the organization has kept itself in the public eye by planting bombs on main Spanish highways.

Analysts in Madrid say that politically, ETA's armed struggle for a separate Basque state on both sides of the Spanish-French border has been superseded by the Socialist government's policy of decentralization and greater regional autonomy. On March 30, the Spanish parliament will vote on proposed legislation considerably enlarging the power of the regional government in the Catalan region. And the Spanish press noted Thursday that the ETA ceasefire statements make no mention of Basque separation from Spain, which had been the organization's purpose for the 40 years of its existence.

Also, ETA has in a way been overshadowed by the more lethal international threat from Islamic fundamentalists. When Jihadists planted bombs in commuter trains in Madrid three years ago, Spaniards out of habit initially blamed ETA for the attacks. The Basque organization immediately denied responsibility, and investigators eventually established that an al-Qaida affiliate was responsible.

"When you have to ask which terrorist organization carried out such and such an attack -- was it ETA or the Islamists, and they have very different aims -- you are confusing the issue, diluting the message," a Spanish official told United Press International from Madrid.

Another factor is the decision by the IRA to end their own violent campaign in Northern Ireland. The Irish situation was often seen as a parallel of Spain's problems with ETA, and the two militant organizations were always said to have close ties.

Still, because this is ETA's eighth offer of a ceasefire and the organization broke the other seven, "experience urges extreme caution," the newspaper El Pais said in an editorial Thursday. "A ceasefire is not the same as a definitive end to violence." The paper ABC warned that to be acceptable, the ETA ceasefire must come "without a political price ... ETA didn't announce a renunciation of arms, but a suspension of criminal activities, which implied a political negotiation," ABC warned.

So far ETA has not made any specific demands in return for its announced ceasefire, scheduled to begin at midnight Friday. Spaniards are likely to debate the wisdom of making any concessions at all to a terrorist group that is on the verge of collapse. In the past, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has vowed not to deal with ETA. His reaction to the cease fire was to urge "prudence and caution." The "process will be complex and difficult," he said.

Part of that complexity involves gaining the support of the opposition Popular Party, which in the past has insisted that the government should accept nothing less than unconditional surrender.

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