Mexican President Will Consider Pardon for Some Indian Guerrillas : Unrest: Salinas makes first mention of amnesty in a televised address. Army appears to have launched a new offensive.

President Carlos Salinas de Gortari late Thursday said he is willing to consider a pardon for some Indian rebels in southern Mexico as his government moved to answer charges of human rights abuses in its conflict with the guerrillas.

In a televised address to the nation, Salinas said, “For the poverty-stricken (rebels) who have participated in this violent and illegal conduct because they were tricked, pressured or even desperate, we will look for benign treatment and even consider pardon.”

His comments came as the army appeared to launch a new offensive, firing rockets near the town of Cerro Huitepec, three miles southwest of the regional tourist center of San Cristobal de las Casas in lush Chiapas state, the Associated Press reported.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

Refugees trickled into San Cristobal despite army roadblocks around the areas where the guerrillas, who want land and improved social conditions, are believed to be hiding. Military officials say 95 people have died in the fighting since the rebels began their uprising on Jan. 1, but reports from church groups place the number of deaths closer to 400.

In an apparent effort to generate goodwill and alleviate shortages caused by the conflict, the government has reportedly sent 20 tons of rice, beans, powdered milk and other food into the affected region.

Jorge Madrazo, director of the government’s national Human Rights Commission, set up an office in San Cristobal on Thursday morning and by afternoon had received nine complaints, mainly involving disappearances, he said.

For safety reasons, he said, commission officials have not yet been allowed access to Ocosingo, where the army is suspected of having executed at least seven captured rebels. The bodies of the captured guerrillas have been moved to the state capital, Tuxtla Gutierrez, where the commission has requested autopsies, Madrazo said.

Americas Watch, the U.S.-based human rights organization, wrote Salinas on Thursday to protest the apparent execution-style slayings of at least 21 guerrillas, the bombardments of civilian hamlets and the killing of a Red Cross worker in unclear circumstances.

The organization questioned the ability of the government’s human rights officials to fully investigate allegations of abuse, especially those in which the army is implicated. It urged Salinas to give his full cooperation to international human rights organizations who plan to investigate.

“The peaceful and legal protests of the poor majorities in Chiapas in the recent past have been greeted with repression, authoritarianism and (arbitrariness), as well as with violence from local powers (who act) with official impunity,” Americas Watch wrote.

While the violence appeared to have abated in Chiapas, a group claiming to represent an urban branch of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, as the guerrillas in southern Mexico call themselves, vowed to fight on and threatened to attack “the nerve centers of the oligarchy” in the capital.

The so-called Mexico City Urban Front, in letters to Mexican newspapers published Thursday, urged citizens “to humor and protect us” as the group fights “for socialism” and against hunger, electoral fraud and corruption.

“It cannot be legal to massacre with bombs our demands for a better future,” the group said. “We also have a right to speak, but unfortunately the government only understands the words of weapons.”

Earlier Thursday, Salinas spoke out against the uprising, calling it “despicable” and harmful to the name of Mexico. “Violence does not generate more liberty, nor more democracy, but rather hatred and political intransigence,” he said.

Salinas and other government officials, who have contended that the guerrillas had help from Guatemalan leftists and other foreigners, said the leadership of the insurgency is made up of well-trained, educated “professionals” who, taking advantage of historical grievances, have rallied a group of indigenous peasants, including 14- and 15-year-olds, to participate in the uprising.

Salinas made his remarks after a ceremony in which, as part of a traditional celebration of the nation’s 1915 agrarian reform law, he handed out titles to land long occupied by the recipients, legalizing their claims to the properties. The problems of landless peasants that the 79-year-old law was meant to solve go to the heart of long-held grievances that turned Indians here into rebels.

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Salinas has further amended the old reforms, instigating a survey of disputed land nationwide and allowing peasants who are part of an ejido , a communal farm based on Indian traditions, to divide their land into private property.

He has also substituted direct subsidies for farm price supports, saying that previous policies have not worked. However, the new policies--less than a year old--have yet to show results.

The problems of the countryside are evident in Tzibaja, which until the guerrillas’ New Year’s Day uprising was just another poor Indian village without enough land to support the 300 or so families who live here. Now, this village in the hills above Ocosingo--where the heaviest fighting of the conflict has taken place--may become a symbol of both the festering problems that led to the revolt and the government’s efforts to address them.

Government officials promised to examine land disputes in Tzibaja and San Juan Chamula, a village near San Cristobal, after speaking with leaders of diverse groups in Chiapas on Tuesday.

In the wake of the fighting, people here are reluctant to discuss their disputes. Women in flower-embroidered blouses and beribboned, ankle-length wrap skirts shut the metal doors of their unpainted concrete houses as strangers walk down the dirt streets.

“People are afraid because of all that has happened,” said one young man, speaking on the condition his name would not be used.

The village’s problem, he said, is land: “We have been asking for more land since the time of our fathers, but we get no answer.”

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Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson, in Mexico City, contributed to this report.