Mexico Orders Arrest of Five Rebel Leaders : Civil unrest: Zedillo goes on offensive after agents find weapons. Subcommander Marcos is identified.

After two months of frustrating attempts at dialogue, President Ernesto Zedillo went on the offensive Thursday night against the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army in Chiapas, unveiling the identity of its mysterious leader, Subcommander Marcos, and issuing arrest warrants for Marcos and four other guerrilla leaders.

The president said he ordered the Mexican army to enforce the warrants after federal agents uncovered “an arsenal” of weaponry and a wide Zapatista conspiracy to undermine the government through future attacks nationwide.

In announcing his tough new policy against the rebels, who rose up against the government 13 months ago, Zedillo said he decided to abandon negotiation for prosecution after federal police staged two raids on Zapatista safehouses, in Mexico City and in the state of Veracruz.

The Wednesday raids uncovered a stash of mortars, grenades, high-powered firearms and explosives, along with evidence indicating that the rebels were preparing for armed attacks within and outside Mexico’s southernmost state, Zedillo said.

“Today I am informing the nation that while the government persisted in attempts at dialogue and negotiation, the Zapatistas were preparing new and greater acts of violence, not only in Chiapas but in other parts of the country,” Zedillo declared, explaining why his government suddenly shifted from its commitment to negotiate a solution with the rebels.

Striking at the core of the movement identified with indigenous Mayan Indians from Chiapas, the president said agents from the federal attorney general’s office arrested a group of Zapatista rebels and seized documents “that allowed us to determine that the origin, the leadership and the goals of this group are neither populist (nor) indigenous.”

Verbally unmasking the guerrilla leader who was known to most Mexicans only by his eyes, his pipe and his black ski mask, Zedillo identified Subcommander Marcos as Rafael Sebastian Guillen Vicente. The president said nothing further about Marcos’ identity--the object of a national near-obsession in the year since the rebel led an uprising that left 145 people dead. Despite the toll in lives, Marcos’ populist rhetoric was so powerful that it won sympathy even among Mexico City’s middle class.

Hours after his speech, Zedillo’s top prosecutors unveiled Marcos literally. Holding a letter-sized black and white photo of a mustachioed man in one hand and a transparency of a ski mask in the other, an assistant prosecutor transposed the two and told reporters that the man in the photo was Marcos.

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Mexico’s attorney general, Antonio Lozano, explained that the rebel leader was identified by a woman his agents arrested during the raid on the safehouse in Mexico City’s Vertiz Narvete district. He named her as Maria Gloria Benavides Guevara, alias Subcommander Elisa, and said she was married to Jorge Javier Elorreaga, who was named by Zedillo as one of the top five Zapatista leaders.

Lozano, who listed nearly two dozen people arrested on charges of terrorism or sedition and conspiracy in connection with the raids here and in the Veracruz town of Yenga, indicated that Marcos’ identity was verified by documents found in Benavides’ house. The documents showed that the guerrilla leader had used the alias Zacaria “during an earlier era,” he said.

The president asserted during his speech that documents discovered at the safehouses showed the Zapatistas grew out of an earlier guerrilla group founded in 1989 as the National Liberation Forces. The only previous evidence of that group is an 18-page catechism on how to form a guerrilla army, the Mexico City-based Center for the Historic Research of Armed Movements told The Times on Thursday night.

The document was similar in form to Marcos’ scores of communiques throughout the year.

Before Thursday’s startling announcement, Zedillo’s government had made repeated attempts to establish a formal dialogue with the Zapatistas. The president stressed in his speech that he had met one of Marcos’ key demands: permitting a Roman Catholic bishop in Chiapas who sympathized with the rebels to serve as mediator in the talks.

But Zedillo--his image severely weakened by a series of political and economic crises two months into his six-year term--also made it clear that there were other motives behind the policy shift.

Zedillo said that after discovering the Zapatistas’ arms caches he was forced to act “to protect the security of all Mexicans and preserve social peace. The government cannot nor should not remain indifferent to violations of the constitution that in this case clearly imply a threat against the people of Mexico and public order.”

Conservative forces in the capital reacted to the crackdown with instant praise. The Mexican employees federation, which had been increasingly critical of the president, issued an urgent communique late Thursday declaring that “these actions allow the beginning of the recovery of confidence.”

There was no immediate reaction from the Zapatistas to the president’s late-evening announcement. But Zedillo said he has ordered intensified army patrols in Chiapas and assigned an army contingent to protect the federal attorney general’s agents as they attempt to arrest the leaders in their rain-forest stronghold near the Guatemalan border.

Reports from Chiapas indicated that the Zapatista fighters had declared a state of “red alert” and were setting up roadblocks on entrances to their stronghold.

In an effort to soften the impact of his new strategy, the president said he will submit to the Mexican Congress an amnesty bill to cover any Zapatistas who agree to surrender their arms--an offer few members of the guerrilla force have agreed to in the past. He said the government will also intensify social programs and dialogue with unarmed activist groups to redress their grievances.