Salinas Orders Cease-Fire in Troubled Mexican State : Revolt: President appoints peace negotiator to talk with Zapatista rebels. Pardons are also offered.

In an effort to end 12 days of bloody rebellion, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari on Wednesday announced a unilateral cease-fire in the southern state where Indian guerrillas have been battling the Mexican army since New Year’s Day.

The truce was declared as Salinas’ newly appointed peace negotiator was reportedly close to making his first contact with the guerrillas, who call themselves the Zapatista National Liberation Army after Mexican revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata.

Addressing the public on television and radio, Salinas ordered the army, which now claims to have regained control of most of the disputed region in the state of Chiapas, not to fire unless attacked. And he made his most concrete offer yet of a pardon for those who took up arms.

Salinas said he was taking the conciliatory actions to promote a peaceful solution to the insurrection, which has left scores dead and caused keen embarrassment to his government.

“I have decided to suspend all first use of firepower in the state of Chiapas,” Salinas said. “I fervently hope that this decision, which harvests the sentiments of all society, will be a first step in saving lives and finding new paths of reconciliation.”

The announcement was designed to clear the way for negotiations with the Zapatista rebels, who have demanded an end to bombing by the military and official recognition.

Salinas stopped short, however, of meeting their demand that troops be withdrawn from Chiapas.

The government-appointed peace commissioner, Manuel Camacho Solis, arrived Wednesday in the Chiapas city of San Cristobal de las Casas and invited the rebels to contact him “wherever and whenever it is convenient.”

Notimex, the government-owned news agency, reported that talks between Camacho and the rebels would begin “very probably in the next few hours.”

Camacho, however, cautioned that the contacts will “take some time.”

Flanked by military, church and indigenous leaders, Camacho said he would lead a “peace caravan” to Ocosingo, a town about 40 miles from San Cristobal and scene of some of the heaviest fighting in the conflict.

Previously, the army had blocked the road, barring access to journalists and human rights monitors.

This raised fears of heavy civilian casualties and hindered efforts by independent observers to verify alleged excesses by the army, including the execution of prisoners.

Representatives of the Roman Catholic Church, who the government earlier tried to blame for the uprising, offered support for the peace efforts.

“This may be our last, historic moment for building a new country,” said Bishop Samuel Ruiz, an outspoken advocate for indigenous peoples and their rights who has clashed repeatedly with the government from his parish in San Cristobal.

The rebels, many of whom are descendants of the ancient Mayas, said they are fighting for indigenous rights.

The cease-fire is one of a number of measures taken in the last three days as Salinas works feverishly to stanch the political damage caused by the uprising, which exposed the abject poverty of a part of Mexico that is often forgotten or ignored.

Chiapas is one of Mexico’s most destitute states, with a low literacy rate and a long history of violent conflict between landless peasants and politically connected ranchers and farmers.

For Salinas, who dedicated his presidency to achieving the North American Free Trade Agreement with the United States and Canada, the rebellion shattered the image that he had fostered abroad, that of Mexico as a modern democratic state, and it cast a pall on the final year of his six-year presidential term.

The Mexican stock market, which reflects investors’ confidence, on Monday took its largest single-day plunge in four years. Bomb scares have been emptying public buildings daily.

And, for the second time in less than a week, thousands of Mexicans marched Wednesday through the congested streets of the capital to demand peace and justice for Chiapas.

Confronted with such a troublesome panorama, Salinas this week replaced his hard-line interior minister with a veteran human rights advocate and named Camacho, a respected and savvy negotiator, to seek peace talks with the rebels.

“The Salinas decisions come out of a true race against the political clock,” said Carlos Ramirez, an editor at the newspaper El Financiero.

In his speech Wednesday, Salinas said that in addition to the cease-fire, he will pardon guerrillas who lay down their arms. Previously he had said he would consider such an offer.

The armed forces, in a statement released by the Defense Ministry, said they will obey the cease-fire and fire only in self-defense or to protect civilians from attack.

But the statement said troops will continue to patrol highways and towns in the disputed areas and that air force helicopters and planes will continue reconnaissance flights.