Mexico City - The Mexican president-elect, Mr Vicente Fox, has sent a letter to Zapatista rebels in a bid to open dialogue with the group operating in southern Chiapas state.
"I've sent a message, in which I expressed my desire to meet with the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) with the only purpose to launch dialogue and examine things that have happened in the past," Mr Fox said on the Seventh Day television programme on Sunday.
Contacts between the Mexican government and the EZLN have been frozen since 1996, when the guerilla group accused authorities of failing to carry out agreements made in San Andres six months earlier dealing with the rights of natives in Chiapas.