We are sending the following wire stories from this week:

1. Zedillo launches PR war against Mexico's rebels -- 3/18 (Reuters)

2. Mexico's Military Purchases from U.S. Soar -- 3/15 (Reuters)

3. Mexico Massacre Suspects Surrender -- 3/18 CHENALHO, (AP)

4. Nobel laureate Menchu: dialogue key in Chiapas -- 3/19 (Reuters)

1. Zedillo launches PR war against Mexico's rebels

By David Luhnow

MEXICO CITY, March 18 (Reuters) - President Ernesto Zedillo hopes to

use a surprise initiative on the Chiapas conflict to gain the upper

hand in a public relations war with charismatic rebel leader

Subcommander Marcos, analysts said on Wednesday.

Zedillo's weekend proposal on Indian rights, one of the key issues in

the troubled state's simmering guerrilla rebellion, won praise from

many Mexicans tired of a stalemate between the government and Indian

rebels who rose up in 1994. Unable to win on the battlefield, the

charismatic pipe-smoking Marcos has consistently scored public

relations coups by painting the Mexican government as inept and

undemocratic. He has thrust his small rebel movement onto the

international stage by using the Internet and hosting high-profile

foreign guests like France's Danielle Mitterrand, wife of late French

President Francois Mitterrand.

Now Zedillo has launched his own solution to the conflict, saying the

country was tired of waiting for negotiators to come up with a

proposal everyone agreed to.

"Zedillo is taking the political initiative here and it's not

gone badly for him. Many Mexicans are frankly tired of the issue and

want progress," said Jaime Sanchez Susarrey, a political science

professor at the University of Guadalajara.

Political columnists, even some of Zedillo's traditional critics,

welcomed the move as an effort to break a deadlock that began when

Zapatista rebels quit peace talks over the Indian rights issue in

September 1996. The rebels accused the government of failing to

legislate the necessary constitutional changes to turn an initial

agreement on Indian rights into law.

"My reservations notwithstanding, I applaud the move..."

political commentator Miguel Angel Granados Chapa wrote in Reforma

newspaper. He said he was mainly unhappy that the government took so

long to come up with its bill. The bill, sent by Zedillo to Congress

over the weekend, is expected to be changed slightly in order to win

the necessary two-thirds majority.

Analysts expect the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to

ally with the conservative National Action Party (PAN) -- no friend of

the rebels -- to get it through.

But the proposal has sparked controversy. Mexico's left-wing

opposition -- generally sympathetic to the Zapatistas -- and a

church-led body charged with negotiating to end the conflict sharply

criticized the move, saying Zedillo should not have acted

unilaterally.

"The proposal ... violates the spirit of peace talks ... Passage

of the proposal ... would seriously jeopardize the credibility of the

peace talks and could lead to a wider crisis," the church-led

National Intermediation Commission (Conai) said in full-page ads in

newspapers on Wednesday.

Conai said the government proposal seriously weakened some of the main

points of the San Andres accord on Indian rights signed between both

sides in early 1996. Specifically, it accused the government of

failing to recognize Indian judicial and political customs.

The Zapatistas, holed up in their jungle strongholds and

surrounded by thousands of Mexican army troops, have yet to respond to

the proposal.

But others said Zedillo may have painted the Zapatistas into a

political corner. If they reject the agreement, as seems likely, they

will appear inflexible in the public eye and support for a military

solution to the conflict could grow.

The move comes amid increased anti-Zapatista rhetoric from the

government. Zedillo was quoted on Wednesday as telling Chilean

newspaper El Mercurio in an interview that "the Zapatistas want

to provoke violence."

Meanwhile, an official ad campaign on television and radio has

cast the government as the peacemaker.

"To the military and paramilitary pressure already on the

Zapatistas, the government has now added a public relations and legal

ambush," Carlos Montemayor, an expert on Mexican guerrillas,

wrote in the leftist daily La Jornada.

2. Mexico's Military Purchases from U.S. Soar - Report

MEXICO CITY, March 15 (Reuters) - Mexico's military purchases from

the United States increased sharply in 1997, along with procurement

from private sources, La Jornada newspaper reported on Sunday.

Citing official U.S. government documents, La Jornada said

U.S. Foreign Military Sales (FMS) to Mexico rose to $28 million in

1997 from $4.8 million the year before. The Mexican Defense Ministry

had no comment on the report.

La Jornada said U.S. officials had no details of the military

supplies sold last year, but in 1996 the shopping list included mainly

communications equipment, trucks and aircraft parts.

The purchases placed Mexico third behind Colombia and Venezuela in

terms of Latin American buyers of military supplies from Washington,

the paper said.

The newspaper said State Department officials had also confirmed

that sales of military supplies to Mexico by private companies totaled

at least $12 million last year.

In addition to commercial trade, the Mexican army acquired 73

helicopters and is expected to receive considerable amounts of machine

gun ammunition this year under a U.S. program to hand excess equipment

over to its allies.

Experts say the Mexican army has grown quickly in size and power

since President Ernesto Zedillo took office in December 1994, leading

the fight against everything from drug trafficking to guerrillas and

common crime. Spending on the military doubled between 1995 and 1998.

REUTERS

3. Mexico Massacre Suspects Surrender

Wednesday, March 18, 1998

CHENALHO, Mexico (AP) -- Thirty-five men accused of taking part in

a massacre in Mexico's southern Chiapas state surrendered to federal

officials Wednesday.

The men, almost all governing-party supporters from local Indian

villages, lined up in their ragged clothing at a cultural center,

where they surrendered to officials from the attorney general's

office. Some insisted they were innocent and demanded that supporters

of the leftist Zapatista National Liberation Army be prosecuted as

well.

"We are turning ourselves in so that we will not be

persecuted because the Zapatistas say that we are killers. But that is

not true. We are innocent," said Martin Entzin Luna of the

village of Los Chorros. "We demand that there is justice for all,

that the others are also punished."

More than 150 people -- including several state police officers

have been charged or are under formal investigation in the Dec. 22

raid on the hamlet of Acteal, where 45 people were shot to death.

It was the bloodiest outburst in the sporadic violence in Chiapas

state since a January 1994 cease-fire halted fighting between the

federal army and the Zapatistas.

Government supporters say Zapatista sympathizers killed at least

18 of their comrades in the Chenalho region, which encompasses Acteal

and Los Chorros. They said the killings occurred between May and

December last year with little response by officials.

Prosecutors say residents of Los Chorros believed people from

Acteal were involved in at least some of the 18 killings. Many of

those in Acteal were refugees driven out of their own villages by

pro-government mobs. The incident forced the Chiapas state governor

and other officials to resign.

Both pro- and anti-government groups have been accused of using

killings, assaults and house-burnings against their foes in many parts

of the state -- a situation aggravated by the fact that

government-rebel peace talks have been stalled for almost two years.

Last week, the federal attorney general's office said in a report

that residents of Los Chorros formed a self-defense brigade in

September and began plotting an attack on Acteal in October.

They reportedly took action in December after the brother of a

pro-government official was killed.

State police ignored telephoned reports that the attack was under

way and later bungled the initial investigation, federal prosecutors

said. Several state police officers have been arrested on charges of

helping transport the illegal weapons used by the attackers.

Copyright 1998 The Associated Press

4. Nobel laureate Menchu says dialogue key in Chiapas

CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico, March 19 (Reuters) - Nobel Peace

Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchu said on Thursday pursuing dialogue was

the only way to end violent conflict in the southern Mexican state of

Chiapas.

Menchu, a Guatemalan Mayan Indian who has just received Mexican

citizenship as well, visited the village of Acteal where paramilitary

gunmen opened fire on Dec. 22, 1997, on Indian supporters of the

state's Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) rebels. It was the

worst act of bloodshed since the guerrillas took up arms in early

1994.

"Negotiations and dialogue are the only alternative, the only

path to resolve the problems that come about when there are internal

conflicts involving arms," Menchu said.

Tensions continue to run high in parts of Chiapas. Villagers in

the small community of La Realidad complained that military

helicopters and airplanes were making up to 10 flights a day over the

area. La Realidad is considered a stronghold of the Zapatista rebels.

"We are expecting an attack from one moment to the other,"

said a representative of the village known only as "Max."

Menchu won the Nobel prize in 1992 for her human rights work in

Guatemala, where Indians bore the brunt of a vicious counterinsurgency

campaign aimed at snuffing out the rebels.

REUTERS