Chiapas Governor Quits in Bid to Defuse Crisis : Mexico: President steps back from confrontation, ordering army to halt offensive and calling for talks.

Declaring “I surrender my votes for peace,” the controversial ruling party governor of Chiapas resigned Tuesday in the first of a series of dramatic moves to defuse the conflict in Mexico’s southernmost state.

Eduardo Robledo Rincon’s sudden, eloquent resignation met a key demand of the Zapatista National Liberation Army and handed President Ernesto Zedillo a velvet glove in his military crackdown on the rebel leadership.

In moves that bolstered Robledo’s resignation, Zedillo renewed calls for negotiations with the Zapatistas and ordered the 2,500 Mexican army troops and hundreds of federal police to halt their offensive in the jungle stronghold where the rebels have retreated. The forces were on the fifth day of a search for the guerrilla army’s leadership.

“Today I am giving precise instructions to the attorney general’s office and the Mexican army that they not carry out any action which may provoke armed confrontation,” Zedillo said in a lengthy address to indigenous Mexican groups at Mexico City’s National Palace.

“The Mexican army will not take any offensive action and will restrict itself to patrols aimed at preventing acts of violence.”

The “cease-fire,” as senior officials later called the move, and Robledo’s resignation appeared to remove major obstacles to a political settlement in embattled Chiapas. Opposition forces claim that Robledo won his post through ruling party fraud in August’s elections, and his removal was the principal objective of Chiapas’ self-styled “government in rebellion,” which sympathizes with the Zapatistas.

Zedillo’s latest strategy shift came amid mounting criticism here and abroad that the military operation risked human rights abuses and a potential blood bath. After the president’s announcement, the army loosened its grip on the Lacandon rain forest, where the Zapatistas and their leaders have holed up, and journalists and human rights monitors were permitted to enter parts of the region for the first time since the crackdown began Friday.

Zedillo laid the groundwork for the get-soft approach late Monday during a closed-door meeting with members of a legislative committee assigned to negotiate with the Zapatistas last December. In comments made public Tuesday, the president told the legislators that his decision last week to unmask and crack down on the rebel leadership was “only one intermediate step in negotiations.”

On Tuesday morning, the president took several steps back from the brink of military confrontation. He conceded to the Indian groups at the palace that his initial decision was “very grave, but necessary to apply the law and guarantee public security.” Now, he said, it was time to talk peace, and he announced he will send to Congress today an amnesty bill for Zapatistas who lay down their weapons and agree to negotiate.

“The government has not opted for armed violence in Chiapas,” he said. “The will of the federal government is to resolve politically the conflict in Chiapas.

“With that commitment, I issue today a new call to the Zapatista leadership to state clearly its intention to opt for the political and legal path to a just, dignified and definitive solution.”

Coming less than 24 hours after Zedillo and the leadership of his ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI, gracefully acknowledged a historic election defeat in the strategic, west-central state of Jalisco, the president’s conciliatory tone and Robledo’s resignation were seen as advances for the ruling party’s reformist factions--and key steps aimed at softening the authoritarian image of the political institution that has governed Mexico for nearly seven decades.

Robledo, whose resignation was formally accepted by Chiapas’ elected state legislature, had quit the PRI in December on the eve of his inauguration. It was an unsuccessful attempt to separate himself from a party many peasants and Indians in Chiapas equate with oppression, exploitation and corruption in the impoverished but resource-rich state.

State legislators named Julio Cesar Ruiz Ferro, a state government technocrat and British-trained economist, as Robledo’s replacement until new elections are held. Ruiz Ferro, a Chiapas native, has been a member of the ruling party for 27 years, and it was still unclear Tuesday whether the opposition would accept him.

Interior Secretary Esteban Moctezuma Barragan had reportedly been trying to negotiate Robledo’s ouster for more than a month, along with that of the PRI governor in neighboring Tabasco, elected amid similar opposition allegations of fraud. But a two-day ruling party uprising against federal authority in defense of Tabasco’s governor, Roberto Madrazo Pintado, last month appeared to sidetrack any such efforts.

Federal intervention in post-electoral conflicts is not without precedent. Zedillo’s predecessor, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, agreed to oust several ruling party governors to put down violent opposition protests during his six-year term.

But Zedillo has promised a new era of federalism and anti-authoritarianism that separates the president from the ruling party and the federal government from the states, and it remained unclear Tuesday what role his government played in Robledo’s resignation.

In stepping down in a locally televised speech, Robledo insisted that the decision was entirely of his own free will and strictly in the interest of averting war.

“This is the product of profound reflection; it defines and makes patently clear my rejection of violence and my deep wish that Chiapas quickly finds a new harmony,” Robledo declared in the governor’s palace in the state capital of Tuxtla Gutierrez.

The governor called on his Democratic Revolutionary Party opponent, Amado Avendano, to abandon his government in rebellion and give up his ambition to replace him.

Avendano, a veteran social activist and newspaper publisher in Chiapas, praised the moves toward peace but stressed that they are not enough. Robledo’s resignation, he said, “helps relax the terrible climate of tension in Chiapas. But it is only one of the conditions. We need peace in Chiapas, and we won’t have peace until the soldiers go back to their barracks.”

During a brief press conference following his speech, Robledo was asked whether he thought his resignation would, in fact, bring peace.

“It is an important contribution to deter violence,” he said. “I believe there will be no pretext now for not making peace.”

But Robledo expressed sadness that such a peaceful change could not have come to Chiapas as it did to Jalisco on Sunday--in free and clean elections that the opposition and ruling party both proclaimed a victory for democracy.

“More than 500,000 Chiapas residents conquered everything--rumors, fears and threats--and gave an example to the world last Aug. 21,” he said, referring to the state elections that he again insisted he won. “Without spilling a single drop of blood, they demonstrated that they wanted an era of peace and democracy.