The Basque separatist group ETA said on Thursday it was ending four decades of armed struggle and called for talks with the Spanish and French authorities on ending Europe's last major guerrilla conflict.

"ETA has decided the definitive cessation of its armed activity," the group said in a statement through Basque-language newspaper Gara and an online video.

"ETA calls upon the Spanish and French governments to open a process of direct dialogue with the aim of addressing the resolution of the conflict," it added.

Three masked ETA members sat behind a table to read the statement, raising their fists in the air at the end of the video.

Thursday's declaration is a significant shift for ETA, whose goal was to carve out an independent Basque homeland in northern Spain and southern France, and takes the group far beyond the permanent ceasefire it announced in January.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero dismissed that gesture as meaningless unless the group turned in its arms.

The nationalist group has been severely weakened in recent years by the arrests of hundreds of its members and seizures of its weapons. It has also come under pressure from its own political arm and former members, now in prison, to disband.-Reuters