MADRID, July 29 (AFP) - Spanish Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso told a parliamentary probe into the Madrid train bombings Thursday there nothing to link the armed Basque separatist group ETA with the attacks, as the previous government claimed.
"All impartial evidence points to Islamist terrorism," Alonso told the commission of inquiry. "There was nothing to lead to ETA."
The new Socialist government, which won general elections three days after the March 11 attacks, accuses its conservative predecessor under Jose Maria Aznar of deliberately misleading the public by insisting ETA was to blame.
Evidence pointing to Islamic extremists started to emerge within hours of the bombings of four commuter trains, Spain's worst ever terror attack which left 191 people dead and injured some 1,900.
But Aznar's party still maintained ETA was behind the blasts even as evidence emerged fingering Moroccan extremists believed to be affiliated to the Al-Qaeda network.
A total of 19 people, most of them Moroccan, are in custody, including two outside Spain, and dozens more have been arrested.
Many Spaniards believe Madrid was attacked because of the presence of Spanish troops in Iraq with the US-led occupation forces. The Socialists, which opposed the invasion of Iraq, pulled the troops out after they took power.
The parliamentary commission is trying to determine whether Aznar's government had good reason to point the finger at ETA.
Alonso's predecessor Angel Acebes declared before the commission on Wednesday that ousted government did not lie or mislead the public when it insisted for two days after the blasts that ETA was responsible.
"There was no manipulation, no invention, and no political interpretation" on the part of the former government, said Acebes.
He maintains the first clear evidence of Islamic militant involvement in March 11 did not emerge for more than 48 hours, when police confirmed a tape found in a van believed used by the bombers contained Koranic verses and that detonators inside were not of a kind used by ETA.
Meanwhile, the justice ministry announced that police have arrested a man, believed to be Moroccan, who visited the house near Madrid where the bombs were said to have been put together.
ETA, fighting for an independent state in northern Spain and caught red-handed preparing a Madrid attack on Christmas Eve, had immediately denied having anything to do with March 11.
Earlier Thursday, former foreign minister Ana Palacio insisted that the government had been right to blame ETA, which has been responsible for the deaths of 800 people in 36 years.
Spanish authorities claim to have seriously weakened the organisation with the arrest of hundreds of operatives in recent years.