Storm, Leaders’ Pleas End Chiapas Impasse : Mexico: Government negotiators earlier refused to resume talks until peasants dispersed.

Clearing the way for the start of peace talks between the government and the Zapatista National Liberation Army, hundreds of rebel supporters left the negotiation site Friday night, driven away by a severe thunderstorm and the pleas of their leaders.

After the village center was cleared, eight ski-masked rebel delegates to the talks told an open-air news conference that they had asked community coordinators to take their townspeople home.

“We regret the pain (this causes) our Indian comrades,” Commander Tacho said from the lighted steps of City Hall. “And we regret that this has been a government condition to begin the dialogue.”

Government negotiators had refused to attend the talks because they said the Zapatista supporters’ presence around the basketball court where the talks are to be conducted violated the security agreement reached by both sides earlier this month.

The late-afternoon rainstorm reinforced the pleas of the Zapatista negotiators, dislodging the Indians camped inside the security cordons. After an hourlong downpour, the rebel supporters packed their makeshift tents and got into open trucks or began the long hike home.

Earlier in the day, the rebel supporters had said they were mystified by the government’s objections to their presence.

“We just want to show our support for the Zapatistas, to be part of this,” said Sebastian Luna Gomez, a 38-year-old peasant farmer who came here from the nearby district of Tenejapa. “The government thinks this is a sit-in, but it is not. We are not shouting. We have no signs. Obviously, they just do not want to talk.”

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In a sign that boded ill for substantive progress during the talks, both sides had appeared to be hardening their stances on the issue of the Indians’ presence.

“These are obviously two very different perceptions of the world,” said Pablo Romo, director of the Fray Bartholome de las Casas human rights center in San Cristobal de las Casas, about an hour’s drive from here.

A government statement had accused the rebel supporters of being acarreados , a term used for people taken by busloads to political rallies, and claimed to have proof that members of the Zapatista mediating committee had staged their protest.

Clearly insulted by the accusation, Commander Tacho said: “The government repeats the mistake of considering Indians incapable of organizing by ourselves and that we can only move if someone leads us by the hand. They are wrong. We are capable.”

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The Chiapas talks are aimed at setting procedures and an agenda for another round of negotiations that will deal with the issues that led Indians in Mexico’s southernmost state to take up arms on Jan. 1, 1994.

Security rules established for this week’s talks require four concentric circles of people guarding the negotiation site: first, the International Red Cross; then, residents of San Andres Larrainzar; third, members of civic organizations, and, fourth, military police.

But the area between the third and fourth circles had been filled with women in embroidered blouses and men in hats with bright ribbons who, like Luna Gomez, live in nearby towns.

An Interior Ministry statement issued in San Cristobal de las Casas had called their presence unacceptable.