Spain mourns policemen

SPANISH Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar joined scores of mourners yesterday at the funeral of two policemen killed a day earlier by a bomb blamed on the armed Basque separatist group ETA. The coffins of the two policemen, draped in the Spanish flag, were carried into the cathedral of the city of Pamplona in Spain's northern Navarre region in front of a guard of honour of police and civil guardsmen. Aznar, accompanied by Interior Minister Angel Acebes, decorated the coffins with a medal for distinguished police service and expressed his condolences to the families. Pamplona's Archbishop Fernando Sebastian told mourners: “With firmness and respect, we remind our leaders...they are morally obliged to put the safety and liberty of citizens ahead of any partisan political objectives.” The two officers were killed on Friday in the small town of Sanguesa, 45 km (28 miles) southeast of Pamplona, by a bomb which hurled their white patrol car into the air. The policemen, both in their fifties, had come to the town of 5'000 people to renew identity cards for locals. A third policeman was seriously injured in the attack and a civilian sustained minor injuries. Tensions are running high in the Spanish autonomous region of the Basque Country following municipal elections on Sunday. The radical separatist party Batasuna, banned on grounds that it supported ETA, was prevented from contesting the polls. If confirmed, it would be the first ETA attack since February. The guerrillas have killed 839 people since 1968 in a campaign for an independent state in northern Spain and southwest France. The United States and the European Union have listed ETA as a terrorist group. Navarre is not part of the Basque Country but separatists claim it as part of the Basque homeland.