Bilbao, Spain - The trial of the prime minister of Spain's semi-autonomous Basque region began Thursday on charges of having met with the illegal Batasuna party which is regarded as the political wing of the militant separatist group ETA.

Juan Jose Ibarretxe was the first Basque prime minister to be tried on criminal charges.

Ibarretxe arrived in the Bilbao court along with seven other accused including Basque Socialist leaders Patxi Lopez and Rodolfo Ares and Batasuna leader Arnaldo Otegi.

The accused also included four other Batasuna representatives arriving from prisons, where they were being held on separate charges.

Two associations representing victims of terrorism are requesting prison sentences of up to three years for Ibarretxe and the Socialist leaders for having accepted Batasuna as a negotiating partner despite its having been banned for links with ETA in 2003.

The Batasuna members face up to four years.

Ibarretxe and the Socialists held meetings with Batasuna during a ceasefire by ETA in 2006 in an attempt to facilitate a peace process and to end the group's four-decade violent campaign which has claimed more than 800 lives.

An attempt at peace talks between ETA and Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialist government collapsed in late 2006 when ETA violated the ceasefire with a car bombing that killed two people at Madrid airport.

Defence lawyers argue that having contacts with Batasuna during the ceasefire, which lasted officially from March 2006 to June 2007, was not a criminal offence, but part of legitimate attempts to end ETA's violence.

Several Spanish political leaders have held talks with ETA, according to the lawyers who summoned Zapatero, his conservative predecessor Jose Maria Aznar and two former interior ministers as witnesses.

They were expected to answer questions in writing instead of appearing personally in court.

Exceptionally, prosecutors are also defending the acquittal of the accused.

The trial opened about 50 days before the Basque regional elections, which Ibarretxe's Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) could lose for the first time in two decades, with some polls predicting a Socialist victory.

The court was expected to take a decision on January 22. (dpa)