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The Spanish government has refused to hold talks with Basque separatist group ETA.
The militant organisation, which has been blamed for 829 deaths over four decades, announced an end to violence seven months ago.
In a statement released to the French press, ETA says it wants to negotiate with the government.
At least 42 people including 30 Islamist militants were killed in Yemen on Monday night and Tuesday, officials and residents said, as the government pressed ahead with a new US-backed offensive against insurgents in the south.
The Islamist rebellion is of serious concern to the United States and to Yemen’s much bigger neighbour Saudi Arabia, which both fear that instability could give al Qaeda’s Arabian wing, already active in Yemen, a bigger foothold near oil shipping routes through the Red Sea.
Fighting with assault rifles and grenades between opponents and supporters of Syrian President Bashar Assad escalated in the northern city of Tripoli Monday, killing five people and wounding at least 10, security sources said.
The sources said four men died in the mainly pro-Assad neighborhood of Jabal Mohsen, while a fifth person was killed near Bab al-Tabbaneh, a mainly by anti-Assad district of the port city. Tension and fear had gripped Tripoli earlier Monday after both political and security efforts failed to maintain a cease-fire along the demarcation lines between the rival neighborhoods.
Twenty-three Syrian soldiers were killed in the town of Rastan today in heavy clashes with rebels who destroyed three armoured personnel carriers, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Earlier, opposition sources said nine people, including a local rebel commander, were killed in heavy army shelling of Rastan.
Uganda has captured one of the Lord’s Resistance Army’s top five rebels, bringing it a step closer to catching Joseph Kony, the LRA leader accused of war crimes, the military said on Sunday.
Uganda People’s Defence Forces said Caesar Achellam, a major general in Kony’s outfit of about 200 fighters, had been captured in an ambush on Saturday along the banks of the River Mbou in neighbouring Central African Republic.
They said Achellam had been armed with just an AK-47 rifle and eight rounds of ammunition. He was being held with his wife, a young daughter and a helper.