Zapatistas OK Mexico’s Terms for New Talks

President Ernesto Zedillo’s government appeared to gain the upper hand Monday in the conflict in the embattled state of Chiapas after rebel Zapatistas agreed to its terms for formal negotiations.

In a document signed just before midnight Sunday, eight rebel leaders of the Zapatista National Liberation Army accepted several key government conditions for talks. The agreement, which came after 12 hours of often bitter debate in the first direct contact between the Zapatistas and Zedillo’s envoys in two months, appeared to vindicate the president’s carrot-and-stick policy toward the rebels.

The ski-masked Zapatista leadership agreed to attend peace talks, which begin April 20, unarmed and in a village next to the rebels’ jungle refuge near the Guatemalan border, dropping their pitch to meet in the nation’s capital.

The rebels also gave in on a key demand that, as a condition for the formal talks, the Mexican army withdraw to positions it held before Feb. 9. That’s the day Zedillo verbally unmasked Zapatista leader Subcommander Marcos on television, announced arrest warrants for Marcos and four other rebel leaders--later suspended--and sent the army into dozens of rebel-held villages in the southern state.

For their part, the three Interior Ministry officials who represented Zedillo at Sunday’s meeting agreed only to suspend the arrest warrants for the rebel leaders for 30 more days.

In a speech Monday marking the 76th anniversary of the death of Mexican revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata, for whom the rebel movement is named, Zedillo made no direct reference to the Chiapas talks. But he repeated his government’s commitment to meet with any group in the country and hear any demands.

Most analysts concluded, however, that the president’s strategy clearly had left the Zapatistas on the defensive.

The tenor of Sunday’s preliminary meeting, which was held behind closed doors in the Chiapas village of San Miguel, reflected how the government appears to have gained the upper hand.

The senior rebel negotiator, who identified himself only as Commander Tacho after he was escorted to San Miguel by the International Committee of the Red Cross, was overheard complaining loudly about the government’s selection of the site for the talks.

As Sunday’s discussions dragged on, the Interior Ministry issued a statement indicating that it could reinstate the arrest warrants if the rebel leaders did not agree to its terms before the end of the day. Later, the rebels relented on their demand that the talks be held in Mexico City, which would provide a forum for the Zapatistas’ stated goal of sweeping national reform.

In the final agreement, the two sides agreed to hold the talks in San Andres Larrainzar, a village 15 miles northwest of the Chiapas city of San Cristobal de las Casas.

The document sanctioning the talks gave no indication of whether the agenda will include the Zapatistas’ demand for reform. But it was a commitment by both sides to talk rather than fight at all costs, clearly stating their joint decision for “the continuity of dialogue and negotiation above any other consideration, event, incident or accident.”

The April 20 negotiations will come a year after similar talks between the Zapatistas and the government of Zedillo’s predecessor, former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, led to a sweeping agreement that the rebels later rejected. But both sides largely have respected a cease-fire declared just two weeks into the uprising that began New Year’s Day, 1994, and killed at least 145 people.

In the four months that Zedillo has been in office, he has used a combination of threatened military force and appeals for dialogue to bring the rebels back to the bargaining table.

Although the Zapatistas have not fired a shot since January, 1994, they have proved a continuing threat to the government. A peaceful, one-day insurrection Dec. 19 helped trigger Mexico’s worst economic crisis in more than a decade.