By
The Associated Press
SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico - The Zapatista rebels have agreed to meet with a government commission prior to lobbying Congress for an Indian rights bill, but showed no signs of agreeing to coordinate with officials before marching into Mexico City next month.
Mexico's top negotiator in the Chiapas conflict, Luis H. Alvarez, asked the rebels earlier this month to consult with government officials to ensure the march was not sabotaged by "outside groups."
The government commission that helped draft now-stalled peace accords in 1996 reiterated that request last week.
But in a communiquŽ issued Sunday, rebel leader Subcomandante Marcos said the delegation of 24 Zapatista commanders will meet with the commission only after it arrives in the city, to define an agenda for talks with Congress on the Indian Rights and Culture Bill.
The Zapatistas leave San Cristobal de las Casas Sunday and will march through at least a half-dozen states on their way to the capital, where they will lobby for the bill.
Among other thing, the proposed legislation would grant Indian communities autonomy and mandate proportional representation for Indians in legislatures.
Sending the bill to Congress for its passage was the first official action of President Vicente Fox, who took office Dec. 1 ending seven decades of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party.
The bill was born of the previous government's effort to peacefully end the Zapatista rebellion, which began Jan. 1, 1994, when the Zapatistas briefly captured six towns.
More than 145 people were killed before a cease-fire took hold 12 days later. But peace talks stalled, and pro- and anti-rebel factions have clashed repeatedly.
Yesterday's rebel communiquŽ also invited congressional representatives from all of the nation's political parties to join the march.
"The fight for the recognition of Indian rights and culture goes beyond partisanship," Marcos said.
The majority of governors of the states the Zapatistas will visit on their journey to Mexico City said they supported the march if it would help resolve the 7-year-old conflict, the newspaper Reforma reported yesterday.
Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, said "the presence of the Zapatista National Liberation Army is welcome. I see the march as a crusade for peace. I share with the Zapatistas their fight for the poor."
But Ignacio Loyola, governor of the central state of Queretero from President Vicente Fox's center-right National Action Party, said a march "of this magnitude" was too risky, "given that it could be taken advantage of by other interests."
