The proposals have been heavily influenced by Fr Alec Reid, the Redemptorist priest who helped broker the IRA ceasefire, and by Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president.

The road-map document was among papers seized by French police when they arrested Mikel Albizu, alias Mikel Antza, who is believed to have been the commander of the illegal Basque separatist group since 1992. Last week the documents were made public after being studied by Spanish intelligence.

The seized papers set out a deal offering to end ETA’s 37-year terror campaign in return for a declaration by the Spanish and French governments that the whole region had a right to self-determination. It compares this to the Downing Street declaration issued by John Major and Albert Reynolds in December 1993.

It aims for a Stormont-type parliament with considerable autonomy but still linked to France and Spain for the foreseeable future. There already is a regional assembly for the Spanish Basque provinces, but the document seeks to unite the whole region and open up the way to future independence.

The plan calls for various parties to work together to achieve this through a process of negotiation stretching into 2012. There are many similarities to a Sinn Fein peace strategy issued prior to the IRA ceasefire. If all goes well, there would be tailing off in violence with a temporary ceasefire later this year and an open-ended one in 2008.

The Spanish government says there will be no contact with Batasuna, ETA’s political wing, until violence ends. In May, the Spanish prime minister, obtained authorisation from parliament to begin a peace process on those terms.

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