Madrid - A political row has erupted in Spain over attempts to investigate alleged human rights crimes during the 1936-39 civil war and General Francisco Franco's dictatorship, according to press reports Friday.

Far-left parties are accusing Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialist government of having helped to block a judicial investigation into the abuses committed by Franco, whose uprising led to the war. Franco ruled Spain from the end of the war until his death in 1975.

Zapatero, whose government passed a law to restore the honour of Franco's victims, had hitherto been seen by many leftists as seeking the truth about that turbulent period.

But his commitment to the process has been called into questions ever since prominent judge Baltasar Garzon dropped Spain's first judicial investigation into the fate of Franco's victims earlier this week.

The magistrate holds Franco responsible for more than 100,000 killings in reprisals during the war and dictatorship. Tens of thousands of the late dictator's leftist republican opponents remain buried in mass graves.

Garzon's probe had been opposed by the public prosecutor's office, which argued that Franco's abuses had been covered by an amnesty granted to his collaborators in
1977.

Far-left parties accused the government of having secretly used the prosecutors as a proxy in an attempt to stop Garzon's inquiry.

Critics say the government has been slow in putting into effect the so-called Law of Historic Memory, which was passed under the government's own initiative in 2007.

The law backs the removal of Francoist symbols and support to associations exhuming remains of republicans from mass graves.

Zapatero said Thursday that the Franco era should "sink into oblivion in collective memory."

His comment fanned speculation that the government wanted to bury the affair for fear of increasing problems with the conservative opposition, which still has a former Francoist minister in its ranks.

The government had contributed to "silencing" Garzon, historian Ian Gibson charged.

Far-left parties intend to present initiatives to toughen the Law of Historic Memory.

The initiatives have no chance of being approved by parliament, but they could relaunch the debate about the Franco era, according to the daily El Pais.

The affair could end up in international courts, said Joan Tarda of the Catalan leftist party ERC.

Prominent intellectuals, including Portuguese Nobel literature laureate Jose Saramago, have signed a manifesto in support of Garzon's inquiry. The manifesto was released Thursday.

Conservative representative Ana Mato criticized the manifesto, accusing the intellectuals of dividing Spaniards at the time of an economic crisis. (dpa)