Magistrates at Spain's Supreme Court were today mulling over whether to ban hundreds of candidates from contesting the May 27 local elections in the northern Basque region on the grounds that their parties were fronts for the outlawed separatist party Batasuna. The government and state prosecutors have called for a ban on 133 lists of candidates - nearly half - of the little-known Basque Nationalist Action (ANV) which, they argued, had been infiltrated by Batasuna, reported dpa. The Supreme Court was also to decide on a possible ban on all the candidates of Abertzale Sozialistak, another alleged Batasuna front, and several independent candidates. The opposition conservatives accuse the Socialist government of allowing the return of Batasuna by not banning all the ANV candidates. The government says there is no sufficient evidence for such a move. -- SPA
