Marcos - No negotiations on peace accords Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit By Jesus Ramirez SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico, Feb 1 (Reuters) - Zapatista guerrilla leader Subcommander Marcos has urged the Mexican government to implement agreements on indigenous rights reached two years ago and has says they are not open to renegotiation. The rebel chief, in a statement issued late on Saturday from his mountain stronghold in Chiapas state, also rejected a proposal for a secret meeting he said President Ernesto Zedillo's government had made. ``Zedillo has gone back to betting on postponing a peaceful solution to the conflict by refusing to fulfill the San Andres accords,'' he said. ``We will not renegotiate San Andres.'' The government and leaders of the Zapatista National Revolutionary Army (EZLN) signed a series of agreements on indigenous rights, known as the San Andres accords after the town where negotiators met, in February 1996. They were designed to bring peace after the Zapatistas' violent uprising in 1994 against the government to win rights for some 900,000 Indians in the impoverished southern state. But the government failed to enshrine the accords in law, and moves to give the Indians greater autonomy were seen as the sticking point. The rebels walked out of peace talks in September 1996, accusing the government of backtracking on its promises, and the talks have been stalled ever since. Implementing the San Andres accords, which recognize Indian rights and provide for increased autonomy for indigenous communities, has become a rallying cry for thousands of Zapatista supporters. ``The government must keep its word,'' Marcos said. Outrage over a massacre of 45 Indians by paramilitary gunmen in December has prompted efforts to find a solution to the Chiapas conflict. Mexico's new Interior Minister, Francisco Labastida Ochoa, has said he wants to meet Marcos. In his statement, Marcos said Labastida had sent the EZLN an envelope containing an offer of a clandestine meeting, and he categorically rejected it. ``We would like to make clear that proposal for a confidential meeting...offends us,'' he said. Questioned about events in Chiapas at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Zedillo said the only policy his government was pursuing was one of dialogue and negotiation. ``In no way will the government have recourse to violence in order to resolve the conflict,'' he said, repeating the terms of a speech he made in Mexico's Yucatan state a week ago. Marcos rejected Zedillo's position. ``When he says he has not and will not use force to resolve the conflict in Chiapas, the persecution of Zapatistas and attacks on peasant leaders and indigenous communities has not lessened or stopped,'' he said. He said the EZLN deplored the murder of indigenous peasant leader Rubicel Ruiz Gamboa, gunned down in an ambush in the state capital Tuxtla Gutierrez last week. REUTERS ================================================================= 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-02.03.98-11:19:13-29554