MADRID - A powerful car bomb slightly injured five people in Madrid on Wednesday, minutes after a telephone warning from Basque separatist group ETA and just days after the government offered to open a dialogue if the group renounced violence.
The Basque newspaper Gara told AFP it had received a warning from ETA of the 9:30 am (0730 GMT) blast around 45 minutes in advance.
The outlawed movement frequently uses the paper as an outlet of its intentions.
Police were able to evacuate the area before the bomb, which was made up of explosives stuffed into two backpacks and placed inside a car believed to have been stolen a day earlier, went off.
Five local workers suffered cuts and bruising, according to emergency services, who added that around 40 people required treatment after the blast momentarily affected their hearing.
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who only last week won controversial parliamentary backing for a plan to open talks with ETA if the group agrees to disband, condemned the bomb attack.
"I reject this violent act of terrorism. I reiterate -- the objective of the government is to combat terrorism and put an end to it," Zapatero said.
"ETA's only future is to lay down its arms and dissolve itself," the Socialist premier added, speaking in the senate.
Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso condemned the attack and praised police for their prompt arrival on the scene, adding that the state would not give in to ETA.
"A considerable explosion occurred at 9:30," said Alonso.
"It was a 20-kilo (44 pound) device so it was a really strong explosion," Alonso explained, adding that he knew of two injured and a further 10 people requiring treatment following the blast.
Alonso added that the government was bound to continue "fighting determinedly" against ETA.
The organisation is blamed for the deaths of some 800 people in a four-decade campaign of violence to win independence for the Basque region spanning the Pyrenees in northern Spain and southwestern France.
The group's last fatal attack was two years ago but a February car bomb at a trade centre injured 42 and this month there have been a series of attacks on Basque firms, one only last Sunday.
Last week, the Spanish parliament gave the government the green light to begin a dialogue with the group but only if it eschewed violence.
All parliamentary groups except the main opposition Popular Party (PP) backed the resolution, which was sponsored by the ruling Socialists.
In allusion to the PP's refusal to lend its support, breaking a long consensus between the mainstream parties on how to deal with ETA, Zapatero pleaded for a united front.
"Democratic unity is vital -- it has been a source of great strength (in standing up to ETA) over more than 25 years," said Zapatero, who added that his government sought "maximum consensus" on the issue.
"There is no political price regarding the end of violence," he insisted.
"I assure you the government will step up its efforts for democratic unity," he concluded.
Madrid mayor Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon urged anyone who had any kind of sympathy for ETA's objectives to "let the scales fall from their eyes if they think ETA is anything other than what it is," namely a "terrorist gang, an instrument of terror, of pain."
Representatives of ETA victims plan to demonstrate in Madrid on June 11 to protest parliament's decision to start negotiations with the group, which a victims' association spokesman said would "humiliate both the living and the dead."
Yet even among anti-terrorist associations in Spain stark political differences exist across party lines.
05/25/2005 15:38 GMT