Madrid - French police Friday detained two important suspected members of the militant Basque separatist group ETA, Spanish police said.

Asier Eceiza, 30, regarded as one of the deputies of ETA's military leader Mikel Garikoitz Aspiazu alias Txeroki, and Olga Comes were held after they tried to drive through a police checkpoint near Dijon and lost control of their vehicle.

The two, who were armed, did not resist arrest.

Comes was believed to belong to ETA's Vizcaya cell, its most active unit, which was dismantled with the arrests of nine suspects in Spain on Tuesday.

Spanish police meanwhile discovered a third ETA arms cache following the nine arrests. The cache near Getxo contained 30 kilogrammes of explosives. One of the two caches discovered previously contained 125 kilogrammes of explosives.

The main detainee, cell leader Arkaitz Goikoetxea, confessed that the cell had plans to kidnap Benjamin Atutxa, a local politician in the town of Eibar, in the same way as it abducted local politician Miguel Angel Blanco in 1997.

When the government refused to move imprisoned ETA activists to Basque prisons, ETA shot Blanco dead, prompting millions of people to stage marches against terrorism.

The Vizcaya cell also planned to kill Fernando Grande-Marlaska, one of the National Court judges dealing with ETA, according to police sources. (dpa)