This study focuses on the role played by external actors in the struggle between the Spanish government and the armed organisation ETA in the history of this organisation. While most of the literature tends to analyse this relation from the perspective of the strength, strategies and choices of the two contenders, in this paper we will study it from the angle of the external actors to the conflict and their evolution in the way in which they interacted with the two sides in the conflict. The paper pays a special attention to the conditions in which the renounce to the armed struggle of the armed organisation takes place and how the influence of the external agents contributed to this. We use the concept of veto players that George Tzebelis (Tzebelis, 2002) employed to describe negotiations in multilevel governance model and apply it in a context of an international conflict in which the parties to conflict have to deal with external actors that can influence the outcome of their confrontation. The study looks at this relation from two different perspectives: first, how an international audience has influence the strategy that the armed group has followed in different periods on its existence and, secondly, at the role that actors external to the Basque conflict had in pressing the group to give up its violence defence of the recognition of Basque people as subject of political rights as a nation. The paper will pay a particular attention to the influence that the post 11-S scenario had in the difficulties that the Basque terrorist organization encountered to regenerate its operational structures and that lead to its current situation.
