• by IPS Correspondents (mexico city)
• Saturday, December 24, 1994
• Inter Press Service

MEXICO CITY, Dic 24 (IPS) - Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo on Friday chose Interior Secretary Esteban Moctezuma as official peace negotiator for any future peace talks with the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN).

Meanwhile, government troops - increased to 60,000 - have been closing in on the rebel zone - currently covering about a third of the southern state of Chiapas - reducing the distance between enemy lines from 15 kilometers to only one kilometer in some areas.

Zedillo stressed his "sincere desire ... to reestablish discussions between the two sides, taking all necessary measures to achieve peace with dignity, development and justice," and encouraging the general public to help seek possible solutions.

The President told Moctezuma to establish contact with the National Intermediation Committee (Conai), whose leader Bishop Samuel Ruiz has been on hunger strike for the last five days.

Ruiz and Conai have thus far been excluded by the new government - in power since Dec. 1 - but the EZLN announced on Monday that they were the only mediators that the guerrillas would accept.

The Bishop, was the negotiator during the peace talks from Jan. 13 to Oct. 8, when the EZLN suspended negotiations.

The guerrillas are calling for the resignation of Eduardo Robledo, the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) Governor of Chiapas, who they say was fraudulently elected over Amado Avendano, the Democratic Revolutionary Party candidate.

The EZLN declared the truce terminated with Robeldo's inauguration on Dec. 8, while Robledo said that he was prepared to step down if the rebels would hand over their arms.

Government surveillance flights have increased over the past few days, and the guerrillas have mined the access roads.

PRD leader Cuauhtemoc Cardenas is maintaining dialogue with the rebels - in spite of his party not supporting the armed offensive - and the National Democratic Convention (CND, the political wing of the EZLN) has called on Conai to reinitiate peace talks with the government.

Cardenas and the CND have asked for interviews with Conai, and the United States has sent representative Stuart Symington to Chiapas to monitor events.

Meanwhile, in the mountains of the state of Guerrero - another extremely poor, mostly indigenous area - government troops are patrolling towns and villages even though half the population are working as labourers in Northern Mexico and the United States, and the others deny the existence of armed groups.

The coordinated uprisings threatened by the EZLN's 'Subcommander Marcos' concern the government, although most rural groups have been political rather than military in nature.

© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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