The Basque parliament had earlier approved the plan of organizing the vote on Oct.
25, 2008. The Spanish government and opposition conservatives lodged a complaint at the Constitutional Court. Basque Prime Minister Juan Jose Spanish court blocks Basque referendum ...
World court stays US executions ... Ibarretxe said that if the Constitutional Court blocked the vote, members of his government would take their case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
The vote would have asked the Basques whether they approved of a negotiated solution to Spain's conflict with the militant Basque separatist group ETA and of Basque party talks on the region's right to decide its own future.
Spain fearing separatism Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's government feared that the referendum would encourage separatism in the region of 2.1 million people.
Ibarretxe believes that an open discussion about options including independence would help to solve the problem of ETA, which has killed more than 820 people in its four-decade campaign for a sovereign Basque state.
(Deutsche Welle)
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