Mexican rebel leader emerges from jungle

SAN RAFAEL, Mexico - Masked rebel leader Subcomandante Marcos emerged from the jungle yesterday for the first time in four years to castigate Mexico's political parties as "shameless scoundrels," and said he would back none, including the leftist favourite, in the presidential election.

Zapatista rebel leader Marcos' appearance at a meeting of activists in southern Mexico's Chiapas state seemed to be aimed at reclaiming a political role for the rebels before the election next July.

Smoking his trademark pipe, the enigmatic leader said the Zapatistas would not back any of the presidential candidates.

"They'll pay for everything they have done to us. They are a bunch of shameless scoundrels," Marcos said from behind the black ski mask he has worn in public since the Zapatistas first burst from the jungle in 1994.

"The decomposition of the political class is so great that we can do nothing," said Marcos, who earlier cracked jokes with activists in this town close to Ocosingo, a centre of the Zapatista rebellion.

He reserved special ire for presidential front-runner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and a member of the centre-left Party of the Democratic Revolution, calling him a false leftist.

"They say, 'Maybe Lopez Obrador doesn't steal.' But his team has shown its ability and appetite to do so," Marcos said.

In a video widely broadcast last year, one of Lopez Obrador's closest advisors was secretly filmed accepting money and stuffing a briefcase full of cash.

From the jungle stronghold where the Zapatistas have hidden since hopes for peace talks collapsed in 2001, Marcos has said the rebels will embark on a cross-country, preelection tour aimed at uniting workers, students and activists around a leftist agenda.

The Zapatistas shocked the world when they burst out of the jungle on New Year's Day 1994 and attacked police and army positions, declaring war on the Mexican government to demand indigenous rights.

About 150 people died as the rebels seized towns and clashed with security forces in the first few days, but there has been little fighting since then and the Zapatistas have turned increasingly to civic action.

In 2001 they criss-crossed Mexico in a two-week tour to drum up support for an Indian rights bill. They were received like rock stars, were allowed to address Congress and drew some 100,000 supporters to Mexico City's main square.

But hopes of talks to get the rebels to lay down their arms collapsed when Congress gutted the Indian rights bill.

Chiapas in one of the poorest regions of Mexico, and its population is largely made up of Maya Indians.

Marcos' identity has never been confirmed but he is widely believed to be a non-Indian Mexican academic and political activist.

- REUTERS