GP Delegation Visits Chiapas

[The.Greenbase@gb.greenpeace.org]

>>  INTERNATIONAL GREENPEACE DELEGATION


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                    GREENPEACE PRESS RELEASE
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>>  INTERNATIONAL GREENPEACE DELEGATION
    VISITS CHIAPAS TO JOIN THE DEMAND FOR PEACE
      
MEXICO CITY, 3 MARCH, 1995 (GP) Greenpeace today announced it
will send an international delegation to Chiapas to meet with
those suffering from the violent conflict there and to call on
the Mexican government to find a peaceful and real solution to
this long-standing dispute.
 
The Greenpeace International team including the executive
directors of Greenpeace U.S.A., Canada, Spain, and Latin America
together with the Mexican Executive Director Rafael Gonzales
Franco, will be in Chiapas from the 3rd - 6th of March. The team 
will meet with representatives of the National Commission of
Mediation, social and human rights organizations and with public
officials of the Government of Chiapas. They will also visit
communities of indigenous people who been recently displaced.  
"Greenpeace is visiting the troubled Chiapas region to lend its
solidarity to those suffering there, to investigate what we can
of the environmental destruction that has taken place, and to 
call for a real and immediate peaceful solution," said Rafael
Gonzales Franco of Greenpeace Mexico.   "The Mexican government
must commit to a peace process that can assure the end of the
conditions that lead indigenous people in Chiapas to take up arms
in the first place."
 
Greenpeace has expressed deep concern for the more than 20,000
people who have been displaced by the Mexican Army into the zone
controlled by the Zapatistas. Greenpeace also expressed concern
for the risk to the fragile ecosystem condition of the Lacandona
Rain Forest if an extended war-like confrontation takes place
there.      
 
Greenpeace supports the law initiative for Peace in Chiapas
signed last Wednesday by President Ernesto Zedillo and the
Pluripartidist Commission for Dialogue and Negotiation
"We hope that the approvement of the initiative by the congress
as well as its future application will occur as soon as possible,
so that the indigenous peoples who were displaced can return to
their communities and receive the humanitarian help they urgently
require," Franco said.          
 
Contact:
MEXICO CITY Rafael Gonzalez or Roberto Lopez, Greenpeace: (525)
659-4714 or 659-4768 SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, CHIAPAS.
Leonardo Gonzalez or Alejandro Calvillo Tels. (525)(967) 83548