MEXICO'S ZAPATISTA REBELS FORM POLITICAL FRONT


Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit


    Copyright 1997 by Reuters
    Wed, 17 Sep 1997 1:49:03 PDT

         MEXICO CITY (Reuter) - Mexico's Zapatista guerrillas, who
burst onto the stage in January 1994 with a violent
anti-government uprising, Tuesday announced the creation of a
peaceful political front.
         The announcement was made at the end of a four-day meeting
in Mexico City after 1,111 masked Zapatista rebels descended
from their jungle strongholds in Chiapas state and trekked 750
miles to the capital to revive support for their cause.
         The Zapatista National Liberation Front (FZLN) was
officially set up in the presence of the Zapatista guerrillas
with a promise to make fighting for the rights of nine million
Mexican Indians its overriding task. It has no desire to
participate in elections.
         The front's leader Javier Eliorraga told the meeting,
attended by 2,700 rebels and supporters, that the FZLN was not
the political arm of the Zapatista National Liberation Army
(EZLN), although the two had common aims.
         ``The FZLN was formed by unarmed civilians who are fighting
for the same goals as the EZLN,'' said Eliorraga, who was freed
from jail in 1996 after being accused of EZLN membership.
         The front is demanding the withdrawal of the Mexican army
from all the nation's indigenous regions, including the Lacandon
jungle where the EZLN remains holed up with its political and
military leader, Subcommander Marcos.
         The enigmatic, pipe-smoking Marcos sent a message to the
meeting's inaugural session Saturday, insisting that the FZLN
and the EZLN, although ``sister groups,'' were distinct.
         While the FZLN will devote itself to purely political
activities, he said the EZLN would keep up the armed struggle it
unleased in Chiapas on New Year's Day, 1994.
         ``The war continues in Mexico's southeast and we Zapatistas
remain armed and ready to fight,'' Marcos said.
         Eliorraga said the EZLN would stay outside the civilian
front as long as President Ernesto Zedillo's government failed
to change the conditions that forced it to take up arms.
         The Zapatistas say the Mexican government has reneged on
promises it made to fulfill Indian rights at peace talks in
February last year.
         The talks, which began in April 1995, hit a wall in
September last year over moves to introduce a constitutional
reform that would enshrine Indian rights in law.
         However the Mexican government on Tuesday said it was ready
to restart the stalled peace talks.
         ``With greater flexibility, but also with the greatest
responsibility, we must restart the dialogue, consolidate what
we have in common and resolve our differences,'' Interior
Minister Emilio Chauyffet said.
         But in a reference to Indian aspirations for autonomy he
sounded less conciliatory.
         ``The solution in the conflict in Chiapas cannot ... go
against the unity and cohesion of Mexico,'' he said.
         The opposition president of Mexico's Chamber of Deputies,
Porfirio Munoz Ledo, urged the government to resolve the Chiapas
conflict once and for all.
         ``It is greatly to be regretted that due to torpor, due to a
lack of political decisiveness, (the government) has prolonged
this fratricidal conflict for an unnecessary and aburd length of
time,'' the firebrand deputy said.

 
=================================================================
  NY Transfer News Collective   *   A Service of Blythe Systems 
           Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us          
              339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012             
  http://www.blythe.org                  e-mail: nyt@blythe.org 
=================================================================
 
nytcamer-09.20.97-14:29:21-11373