The Basque separatist organization ETA on Tuesday claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack at Madrid's Barajas airport last week.

But ETA insisted the "permanent ceasefire" with the Spanish government it declared in March 2006 still stood.

"ETA confirms that the permanent ceasefire declared on March 24 still holds (and) claims responsibility for the Madrid attack," said a statement published on the website of Basque-language newspaper Gara.

On Dec. 30, a car bomb exploded in a parking lot of the Barajas airport, leaving two people dead and 19 injured. The blast seriously damaged the parking lot and briefly disrupted airport operations.

The Spanish government immediately suspended all negotiations with ETA, noting that the government would not conduct any dialogue with ETA so long as it refused to unequivocally renounce violence.

ETA, an abbreviation of Basque Homeland and Freedom, was created in 1959 and has called for the establishment of an independent Basque state in the Basque region straddling the Spanish-French border.

Over the past four decades, assassinations, kidnappings and explosions carried out by the group have claimed the lives of nearly 1,000 people.

ETA declared a permanent truce on March 22. Three months later, the Spanish government decided to start talks with the group.

Meanwhile, two suspected members of ETA were arrested earlier in a joint raid with French police in southern France, said the Spanish Interior Ministry on Tuesday.

The interior ministry identified one as Asier Larrinaga Rodriguez and the other as Garikoitz Echeberria.

These have been the first arrests of suspected ETA militants since the Madrid airport bomb attack .

The Spanish authorities have intensified their crackdown upon the separatist group ever since.

(Xinhua News Agency January 10, 2007)