Mexico accepts talks with leftist rebels
MEXICO CITY, April 29 (Reuters) - The Mexican government agreed on Tuesday to talks with a group of leftist guerrillas who bombed energy pipelines last year, if they agree to swear off future violence.
The Popular Revolutionary Army, or EPR, set off a series of explosions in July and September that disrupted oil and gas supplies and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage but no injuries.
The group last week proposed talks with President Felipe Calderon's government and called for the return of two missing activists it says are being held and tortured by authorities.
The government denies having the pair in custody but says it would be willing to negotiate with the group on condition it declares a permanent cease-fire .
"The federal government is open to dialogue ... but only if they publicly pledge to end radical acts of sabotage and violence," Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mourino told reporters.
The EPR wants a five-member panel to serve as mediators, naming a priest, an author, a lawyer, an anthropologist and a nongovernmental organization in a statement posted last week on a Web site for leftist groups.
It has offered a truce while any negotiations continue.
Mourino said the five could act as observers but the government wanted to talk directly with the guerrillas.
The EPR burst into public view in the 1990s when about 70 masked and armed rebels strode onto a stage at a rally in the poor southern state of Guerrero.
It claims several hundred members across Mexico but after a a string of lethal ambushes on rural police and army bases the group remained quiet for nearly a decade.
The rebels burst back into the spotlight in 2007 with the pipeline attacks directed at the state-owned oil monopoly Pemex. (Reporting by Miguel Angel Gutierrez; Writing by Mica Rosenberg; editing by Todd Eastham)
The Popular Revolutionary Army, or EPR, set off a series of explosions in July and September that disrupted oil and gas supplies and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage but no injuries.
The group last week proposed talks with President Felipe Calderon's government and called for the return of two missing activists it says are being held and tortured by authorities.
The government denies having the pair in custody but says it would be willing to negotiate with the group on condition it declares a permanent cease-fire .
"The federal government is open to dialogue ... but only if they publicly pledge to end radical acts of sabotage and violence," Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mourino told reporters.
The EPR wants a five-member panel to serve as mediators, naming a priest, an author, a lawyer, an anthropologist and a nongovernmental organization in a statement posted last week on a Web site for leftist groups.
It has offered a truce while any negotiations continue.
Mourino said the five could act as observers but the government wanted to talk directly with the guerrillas.
The EPR burst into public view in the 1990s when about 70 masked and armed rebels strode onto a stage at a rally in the poor southern state of Guerrero.
It claims several hundred members across Mexico but after a a string of lethal ambushes on rural police and army bases the group remained quiet for nearly a decade.
The rebels burst back into the spotlight in 2007 with the pipeline attacks directed at the state-owned oil monopoly Pemex. (Reporting by Miguel Angel Gutierrez; Writing by Mica Rosenberg; editing by Todd Eastham)
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