Basque Backlash Feared

Gunmen wounded a former Socialist party official in the northern city of San Sebastian on Thursday, hours after the interior minister had warned of a possible backlash following the arrest of 20 people in a major crackdown on the armed separatist group ETA, news reports said.

A police spokesman said Jose Ramon Rekalde, a former opposition Socialist party councilor for justice and education in the Basque region, was shot in the face as he stepped from his car in San Sebastian. He was rushed to a hospital in the city where doctors later said his life was not in danger.

Earlier reports that he was clinically dead on arrival proved to be untrue, police said.

The national news agency said Rekalde had retired from politics and was a teacher of business studies in a Basque university.

Rekalde's wife runs the 'Laguna' bookshop in San Sebastian, which has been attacked frequently by ETA supporters.

ETA, or "Basque Fatherland and Liberty," has killed nearly 800 people since 1968 in its campaign for Basque independence. It has been particularly active since ending a 14-month truce last December and is blamed for 12 killings in shootings and bombings so far this year.

No group has so far claimed responsibility for Rekalde's shooting. But speaking on Antena 3 television earlier, Interior Minister Jaime Mayor Oreja warned that ETA would probably try to avenge Wednesday's raids in which police say they arrested virtually all of the armed Basque separatist group's political leaders.

Mayor Oreja said Spaniards who suffered through a summer of ETA car-bombings and shootings that left eight people dead have reason to be pleased with Wednesday's arrests of 20 ETA-linked politicians and activists.

Police experts quoted by the newspaper El Mundo said some of those 20 public figures had as much decision-making power within ETA as the clandestine operatives who plan or carry out attacks as part of ETA's drive for an independent Basque homeland.

Mayor Oreja promised that Spanish security forces would score victories over the underground ETA network as well, but he cautioned against euphoria over the latest arrests.

"It is to be expected that ETA would seek revenge," he told Antenna 3. "It is to be expected that there will be cruelty in its response, which is intrinsic in a terrorist gang."

The arrests have also raised fears that ETA, or its supporters, could try to disrupt the planned visit Saturday of King Juan Carlos to the Basque town of Hernani to inaugurate a museum dedicated to the work of Basque sculptor Eduardo Chillida.

Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar and visiting German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder are scheduled to tour the museum later the same day.

Joseba Permach, a member of Euskal Herritarrok, a pro-Basque independence coalition linked to ETA, warned Thursday that some public figures traveling to Hernani on Saturday would be welcome—referring to Schroeder—but he added that those b>"who deny the right of liberty in the Basque Country" would not be well received.

Code-named Operation Black Wolf, the lighting pre-dawn raids against homes and political party offices in the Basque country and Madrid were ordered by Spain's top investigative magistrate, Baltasar Garzon.

They targeted a group called EKIN, which bills itself as a grass-roots coordinator of Basque pro-independence groups but which the government says is engaged in everything from ETA fund-raising to helping it plan attacks both large and small. The word EKIN is Basque for "to do."

"EKIN is a group of people who co-direct a terrorist organization with the leaders of ETA," Mayor Oreja said. He called EKIN "a political organization within ETA."

Garzon is expected to begin questioning the 20 on Friday.

Mayor Oreja strongly hinted that Garzon would undertake legal proceedings against three other ETA-politicians who are now protected from arrest because they have seats in the Basque parliament.

One of them is Jose Antonio Urrutikoetxea, suspected of being the mastermind of ETA's bloodiest attack ever—a car-bombing in the underground parking lot of a Barcelona department store in June 1987. Twenty-one people died and 45 were wounded.

The ETA, founded in 1959, declared a cease-fire in Sept. 1998, but ended it in December 1999.