Reuters
September 4, 2001
By Lorraine Orlandi

MEXICO CITY - Seeking to break months of silence from Zapatista rebels, Mexico's government urged guerrilla leaders on Tuesday to rejoin peace talks in troubled Chiapas state even if new Indian rights reforms fell short.

Presidential peace envoy Luis H. Alvarez urged enigmatic Subcommander Marcos, leader of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), to return to the negotiating table despite differences with the government over recently enacted reforms aimed at giving Indians more autonomy.

Alvarez said those differences "do not justify the Zapatistas' refusal to open conversations with a government that by all accounts has shown certifiable signs of its commitment to peace."

"We are ready if the EZLN wants to have a dialogue," he told a news conference. "But to have a dialogue and resolve differences, the will of one side alone is not enough. A mutual commitment to peace is needed."

Similar messages from Alvarez and President Vicente Fox over the past few months have met with silence from the Zapatistas, who returned to their Chiapas jungle stronghold in April following a tour that took them through several states and to the floor of Mexico's Congress to promote indigenous rights.

The Zapatistas took up arms on New Years Day 1994 to defend Indian rights in the impoverished, largely indigenous southern state, and passage of a new rights law had been seen as a key to reviving peace talks that stalled in 1996.

But the reforms enacted last month disappointed Indian leaders and were rejected by the Zapatistas for watering down the original proposal for self-determination by indigenous communities.

Alvarez said the reforms -- proposed by Fox, modified by the Congress and ratified by a majority of Mexico's 31 states -- emerged from a democratic process. But the Zapatistas said it betrayed a 1996 agreement hammered out between the rebel leadership and a congressional peace commission.

The rebels' flat-out rejection of the measure left the two sides at a seemingly immovable impasse.

Until the Zapatistas respond to government pleas to reopen negotiations, the Fox administration will work to "construct a new relationship between Indian peoples, society and the state," Alvarez said.

He denied recent accusations by human rights groups and Chiapas community leaders that the military has stepped up operations in and around the conflict zone to pressure Zapatista bases of support.

Rather, the government has withdrawn troops from seven key military bases, as demanded by the Zapatistas, he said.