EPR bombers reject negotiations

The urban guerrillas of the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR in Spanish) rejected today the terms set by Mexican President Felipe Calderon for peace negotiations. The EPR, which blew up more than a dozen pipelines belonging to the national oil company, Pemex, in July and September of last year, had proposed negotiations to be mediated by several Mexican intellectuals. The EPR has said it  will continue bombing pipelines until the Calderon government reveals the whereabouts of two EPR members who disappeared in 2007, allegedly after being detained by Oaxaca state officials. Last month, writers Carlos Montemayor and Miguel Angel Granados Chapa, among others, offered to act as the go-betweens. Officials from the Calderon government  warmed to the idea in an April 29 communique from the Interior Ministry, but established several conditions: first, the EPR must first renounce further acts of violence; and second, the talks must be directly between the government and the EPR, with the intellectuals acting only as witnesses.

In a communique released today, the EPR said no. "We reject categorically the communique of the Calderon government," the EPR wrote, calling the government's counteroffer "treacherous, grotesque and deceitful."

--Héctor Tobar in Mexico City