Monday March 19 9:06 PM ET
Mexico Rebels, Unhappy with Talks, to Quit Capital

By Lorraine Orlandi

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's Zapatista rebels, at an impasse with lawmakers over Indian rights legislation, said on Monday they will leave Mexico City this week, 10 days after their dramatic arrival trailed by a caravan of supporters.

Charging that the Mexican government was closed to the rebels' petitions for a ``dignified discussion'' over Indian rights legislation, Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos said he and 23 Zapatista commanders would leave the capital on Friday for an undisclosed location in the mountains of southeast Mexico, presumably their home base in Chiapas.

The Zapatistas came to Mexico City to lobby Congress for the passage of laws that would guarantee the rights of Indian communities to run their own affairs, but the rebels and lawmakers could not even agree on how and when they would meet to discuss the legislation.

``Congress has been taken hostage by those who prefer to close their eyes to the national and international mobilization'' in favor of the Zapatista cause, Marcos told a news conference.

Marcos, who had earlier pledged to stay in the capital until the Indian rights bill was signed, took special aim at President Vicente Fox, saying he had made empty gestures in calling for peace talks without fully meeting rebel conditions for returning to the dialogue.

Fox, who has called for Marcos to meet with him personally, told local radio that he hoped the rebel leadership would meet with Congress before leaving the capital and begin a dialogue to end the seven-year armed Zapatista uprising in Chiapas.

The Zapatistas said they would hold a rally on Thursday outside Congress to protest what they described as official intransigence.

Massive Show Of Support

The rebel delegation held a mass rally in Mexico City's central square on March 11 that culminated a 15-day, 12-state tour marking their first public foray outside their Chiapas jungle stronghold since they launched the rebellion on New Years Day 1994.

The so-called Zapatour across Mexico, designed to generate grass-roots support for the Indian rights cause, drew intense national and international attention.

Marcos said the massive show of support for the Zapatista cause had permanently changed the political and social landscape.

``This movement by common people has just begun and no one can stop it,'' he said. He said the Zapatistas would continue their struggle alongside indigenous communities, though he did not elaborate.

He also said the masked rebels had proven their openness to renewing the peace dialogue in traveling unarmed out of their jungle stronghold.

The shooting war in Chiapas lasted only about 10 days in 1994. But the state, one of Mexico's poorest, has been plagued by violence between Zapatista supporters and their foes, some linked to the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) or powerful local landowners.

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