BORDEAUX, France (AFP) - Anti-terrorist police arrested the political leader of Spain's armed Basque separatist group ETA in raids in France and Spain that resulted in arms caches and other suspected members being seized, officials said.
French officials said Mikel "Antza" Albizu Iriarte and his partner, Soledad "Anboto" Iparragirre Genetxea, a suspected former military chief of ETA, were among 17 people arrested in the Pyrenees-Atlantiques region in southwestern France near the Spanish border.
Arms caches were discovered in seven locations in the region as around 140 specialist officers, including members of France's anti-terrorist brigade and intelligence services, swooped on properties, France's interior ministry said.
Large amounts of explosives, documents and large sums of cash were seized.
Spanish anti-terrorist officials said 21 people had been arrested in the raids without explaining the variations in the arrest figures given.
French Justice Minister Dominique Perben characterised Sunday's operation as "a great battle won in the war against terrorism... a very fine operation: a political leader, 16 accomplices, arms caches, sophisticated equipment."
Spanish Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso hailed the arrests as of major importance.
"It is an extremely important operation, one that we can certainly describe as historic," Alonso told reporters in Madrid.
The Spanish minister said that 700 kilograms (1,550 pounds) of dynamite and 500 kilograms of potassium chlorate, a common ingredient in explosives, had been seized in the raids.
According to a French police source, three underground arms caches were discovered in the towns of Saint-Pierre d'Irrube, Urrugne and Briscous, containing explosives, weapons and rocket launchers.
A smaller stockpile of weapons was found in Ayherre, while police found a number of documents in the town of Hendaye.
ETA has been blamed for the deaths of more than 800 people in its violent 36-year campaign for an independent Basque homeland comprising parts of northern Spain and southwestern France.
It has long used parts of southern France as a rear base for its attacks in Spain, but has recently been weakened by coordinated operations by the two nations.
ETA has been relatively quiet this year since the March 11 train bombings in Madrid that were initially blamed on the Basque separatists before evidence emerged indicating that Islamic militants linked to Al-Qaeda were responsible for the 191 people killed and nearly 2,000 wounded.
The Basque militant group last year had announced that Spain's economy, in particular its all-important tourism sector, was a priority target. A series of small bomb attacks rocked coastal resorts in northern Spain in August in an apparent campaign to underline that threat.
In September, ETA vowed in a video to continue its armed struggle until its campaign for an independent homeland was won, urging Basques in France and Spain to join together to seek independence.
The group's last fatal attack was in May 2003 when two policemen were killed in the northern province of Navarra in a car bombing.
France's Justice Minister Perben noted that there were between 140 and 150 Basques detained in France on suspicion of "terrorism".
Meanwhile, a pro-independence deputy from Spain's Basque regional parliament slammed the police operation, saying it had "torpedoed" any chance of a political settlement of the Basque question.
Jose Alvarez accused the Socialist government of "boycotting and torpedoing any attempt at a settlement" of the conflict. "There cannot be a police victory. The only possible, valid solution... will have to be political."
Alvarez is a member of Sozialista Abertzaleak, which replaced ETA's political wing, Batasuna, in the Basque parliament after the party was outlawed last year.
The arrest of an ETA supremo at a local farm caused stupefaction in the small town of Salies-de-Bearn.
The house where Antza and Anboto hid out had not aroused the slightest suspicion among the 5,000 inhabitants of the town or among neighbours.
Parts of the big farm and its outhouses had been let to summer tourists and visitors taking the waters at the town's health spa.
"To say we're astonished is putting it mildly," said one neighbour, a retired man: "We don't like the look of it at all," he said of the ETA presence. "Hitherto all that was down in the Basque country."