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MEXICO CITY - A clandestine Mexican rebel group that said it blew up fuel pipelines as part of an anti-government campaign might strike again but does not pose a major national security threat, analysts say.
Mexico ramped up security around its oil industry and key parts of the capital after the Marxist-inspired Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) said it carried out pipeline blasts this week, and last week and vowed to stage more attacks.
But analysts played down the threat from the group and said they saw little risk to strategic points such as oil export terminals and airports.
"The government needs to take this seriously. The worst thing it could do is ignore it. But that doesn't mean the EPR represents a big threat to national security," said political analyst Pedro Gonzalez.
"I don't think it has the capacity to send out contingents to blow up oil platforms or export pipelines. Those things are well guarded. But there could be more acts of sabotage."
The government, and state-owned oil monopoly Pemex, have taken the threat seriously, deploying extra soldiers and federal police to guard the country's oil wells, refineries and fuel pipelines, which stretch over 14,000km.
Two helicopters were added to Pemex's regular surveillance, and media said several thousand extra guards were deployed.
Tuesday's explosion cut off natural gas supplies in central Mexico, causing about 1200 manufacturers to halt production.
There was no impact on oil shipments from Mexico, the world's No 9 exporter of crude and valued by the United States as a politically stable supplier.
A shadowy group of armed rebels that sprung up a decade ago, the EPR attacked police and army barracks in southern Mexico in the late 1990s but since then has mainly conducted its campaign via the internet.
Analysts say it has splintered into a dozen smaller groups, leaving it hard to say who its leaders are, how many members it has and how well armed they are.
The pipeline blasts appeared to be linked to a long-running conflict in the southern state of Oaxaca between leftist protesters and a local government they accuse of cronyism and human rights abuses.
The EPR said it would continue its actions until the return of two EPR activists missing since May, implying they had been jailed or abducted by Oaxaca government sympathisers.
Analysts question whether the EPR has a deeper agenda than the Oaxaca feud, which saw the colonial city capital taken over by sit-in protests for much of 2006.
"From an ideological point of view, the EPR is stuck in the 1980s. It doesn't really have a chance of destabilising the government and its projects are very abstract," said Gonzalez.
The last time Mexico saw a serious guerrilla threat was in 1994 when masked Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos emerged from a jungle lair in Chiapas state to launch an armed struggle for indigenous rights. Marcos achieved autonomy for some communities, but now spends his days writing romantic fiction.
The EPR opposes conservative President Felipe Calderon, whose 2006 election win was contested by supporters of his leftist opponent claiming fraud.
Its calls for a socialist revolution are vague, but the group's reemergence comes as income disparity and a political split have fanned uprisings from Oaxaca to Mexico City, where leftists set up protest camps over the election.
"Things have been intensifying. The EPR shouldn't be underestimated," said Jorge Lofredo, a political scientist who edits a Web site that hosts communiques from rebel groups.
"I don't think this is the end of it."
- REUTERS
