Spain ? The peace process to end Spain’s Basque separatist conflict – the most promising prospect for resolving the violent conflict in years – ended abruptly with the weekend car bombing at Madrid’s international airport, the interior minister said Tuesday.

“There is no process. It has been broken, it is over, it has been liquidated. ETA ended it with the bomb it set off in Madrid,” Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba told a news conference, naming the militant group blamed for the explosion.

His remarks went farther than those of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who said after Saturday’s thunderous blast that he was suspending – but not canceling – plans to negotiate with ETA, which in March had declared a cease-fire it called permanent.

The blast leveled a five-story parking lot at the airport, injuring 26 people and leaving two Ecuadorean immigrants missing and feared dead amid tons of rubble. ETA has not claimed responsibility for the attack, but a caller who warned authorities before the explosion said he represented the group.

Just a day before the explosion, Zapatero told a news conference he was upbeat about prospects for ending the nearly 40-year conflict that has claimed more than 800 lives as Europe’s last armed militancy fought for an independent homeland in northern Spain and southwest France.