Mexico Says Bishop’s Absence Won’t Stall Talks With Rebels

Government negotiators vowed Monday to restart direct peace talks with Zapatista rebels in Chiapas, a day after the top mediator resigned and accused the government of torpedoing the peace process.

Roman Catholic Bishop Samuel Ruiz, long regarded as the key mediator in the conflict but scorned by some as a Zapatista sympathizer, Sunday accused the government of “constant and growing aggression” against him and others who sought to aid the cause of peace.

Some analysts worried that Ruiz’s departure would add further tension to the vexing stalemate between the government and the Zapatista rebels.

The guerrillas staged an armed uprising in the southern state on Jan. 1, 1994, demanding better treatment of the poor, indigenous people. After 10 days of skirmishes that left more than 140 dead, a cease-fire was negotiated. But after a preliminary accord in February 1996, talks broke off and have remained stalled for nearly two years.

Ruiz said the government had undermined him repeatedly, including President Ernesto Zedillo’s recent criticism of clerics who pursue “theologies of violence.” That left Ruiz, he said, with no authority in the talks.

He also said the Zapatista rebels had gone “heavily silent.” Therefore, Ruiz said, a new phase was needed in the peace process to re-create conditions in which real talks would be possible.

Shortly after Ruiz’s announcement, in his Sunday sermon in the cathedral of San Cristobal de las Casas, members of the church-based National Mediation Commission disclosed that the mediating body itself would be dissolved. The feisty Ruiz has led the commission since it was founded in October 1994; he was once mentioned as a possible Nobel Peace Prize candidate.

Emilio Rabasa Gamboa, the government’s chief negotiator, angrily denied Ruiz’s accusations that the government had fatally undermined the mediation process by attacking Ruiz and the church. Rabasa said the government “will continue in the search for dialogue and negotiation with the Zapatista National Liberation Army.”

Asked whether Ruiz’s resignation will complicate the peace process, Rabasa told a news conference: “I think it is a Chinese proverb that says crises are necessary to be able to solve a problem that has existed for a while, and to be able to move on to a new phase.”

He said he didn’t foresee the creation of any new groups or means for talks. A bipartisan congressional mediating committee has become more outspoken in recent months in its attempts to get the government and the rebels together.

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The National Action Party, a major opposition party in Congress, declared Monday: “Today, more than ever, the Congress must address the definitive solution of the causes that gave origin to the conflict.”

The dispute over mediation in Chiapas erupted on the same day that an army patrol fought with rebels from an unrelated Marxist guerrilla group in Guerrero state, south of Mexico City.

In that incident, the army said, members of the Popular Revolutionary Army, known as the EPR, fired on an army patrol at dawn Sunday from a school in a village near Ayutla; the army responded with gunfire that left 11 rebels dead, five wounded and 21 arrested.

Rodolfo Stavenhagen, a professor at the Colegio de Mexico and a former advisor to the Zapatistas, said the mediation commission’s demise was “practically inevitable because it could no longer function in a mediating role given the attacks it was suffering from the government.” He said it is vital that the Congress and others in Mexican society “assume a more active role since the government has shown that it has no interest in a negotiated, peaceful solution.”

A key role of the commission was to make easier contacts between the government and Subcommander Marcos, the flamboyant Zapatista leader based deep in the Chiapas countryside in a village called La Realidad. Stavenhagen said it now may be tougher for Rabasa to find and talk with Marcos, assuming that the two sides want to do this.