Chiapas governor-elect urges rebels' response

The governor-elect in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, Pablo Salazar, has urged Zapatista rebels to break their silence and respond to calls for dialogue.

Mr Salazar, in an interview with the French news agency AFP, said people were expecting the guerrillas to state their position, now that circumstances had changed in the state.

Mr Salazar's victory earlier this month was the first time the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI, had lost the governorship for seventy-one years. Mr Salazar and the Mexican president-elect, Vicente Fox, have both called for a resumption of peace talks with the Zapatistas which collapsed in 1996.

But the guerrillas' leader, sub-commander Marcos, has yet to respond.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service