MADRID - THE suspected military chief of the Basque separatist group ETA was on Monday charged with terrorist offences in connection with a bomb attack that killed two people at Madrid airport two years ago.

A judge charged Garikoitz Aspiazu Rubina, alias 'Txeroki", who was arrested in France last week, and four others over their alleged roles in the Dec 30, 2006 attack which killed two Ecuadorean immigrants in the airport's car park.

It was the first time Spanish authorities had filed charges against Txeroki, who is facing 21 other cases in the country.

A judge in Paris last week charged him in connection with the Dec 2007 killing of two undercover Spanish police officers in southwestern France.

The 35-year-old suspected guerrilla leader was arrested on Nov 17 in a pre-dawn raid on a rented apartment in the French Pyrenees spa resort of Cauterets.

He cannot be permanently handed over to Spanish authorities until he has been tried in France, a French judicial source said.

Spanish authorities can however request his temporary transfer as part of their own investigations.

ETA is blamed for the deaths of 824 people in its 40-year campaign for an independent Basque homeland comprising parts of northern Spain and southwest France.

Spanish police believe Txeroki is connected to all the major ETA operations carried out since late 2003 when he took over the organisation's military operations.

The Madrid airport bombing torpedoed tentative peace talks between ETA and the Socialist government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. -- AFP