Mexico Leader Sends Envoy to Chiapas : Latin America: Zedillo sends interior secretary to meet opposition activist, plans historic consultation with Congress.

MEXICO CITY — Just two days into his presidency, Ernesto Zedillo sought to fulfill his promise to govern through dialogue Saturday, sending his new interior secretary to meet for the first time with a key Chiapas opposition leader in an effort to avert an insurrection in Mexico’s impoverished southernmost state.

Zedillo’s aides also confirmed that, in an unprecedented move, the president will meet personally with the nation’s legislature Tuesday to collaborate on programs to combat Mexico’s endemic poverty, injustice and corruption. It would be the first time in Mexican history that a president consulted formally and directly with the elected Congress on any issue.

Opposition legislators called Zedillo’s decision to attend the luncheon meeting with opposition and ruling party congressional leaders “historic.” They said it reinforces the 42-year-old Yale-educated economist’s vow to reduce the monolithic power of the Mexican presidency after 65 years of continuous rule by his Institutional Revolutionary Party.

“The idea is to establish for the first time ever a very frank and open dialogue between the executive branch and the legislative branch,” declared Jesus Ortega, the legislative leader of the opposition Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), which has been the ruling party’s fiercest critic in recent years.

“It is an important contribution to a broad national dialogue that all social forces have proposed to improve the conditions of the country,” Ortega said.

A more critical and immediate contribution, though, was Saturday’s hurriedly scheduled meeting between Interior Secretary Esteban Moctezuma Barragan, one of Zedillo’s closest aides and most powerful Cabinet secretaries, and Amado Avendano, the PRD leader in Chiapas whose defeat in the official tallies of gubernatorial polls in August has pushed the embattled state to the brink of all-out insurrection. The meeting took place at Moctezuma’s Mexico City home, but the results were not likely to be known until today.

Avendano’s supporters have vowed a campaign of civil disobedience to paralyze the state and block Thursday’s scheduled inauguration of the ruling party governor-elect, Eduardo Robledo Rincon.

Failing that, the indigenous Zapatista National Liberation Army, which rose up in armed rebellion last January until the Mexican army declared a unilateral cease-fire, has threatened “all-out war nationwide.”

On the eve of Saturday’s meeting, Avendano, who says he is convinced that ruling party fraud robbed him of victory, defined the depth and danger of the conflict he and Moctezuma were attempting to defuse.

“I am not looking for a job,” Avendano, a prominent Chiapas social activist and local newspaper publisher, told reporters in the Chiapas city of San Cristobal de las Casas before leaving for the capital. “The problem will continue to be the same: that is, who heads the state government.”

To critics who assert that Avendano’s opposition forces are incapable of stopping Robledo’s gubernatorial inauguration this week, he bluntly added, “The Zapatista National Liberation Army certainly can block Robledo Rincon from taking power, and civilian society can too, as will be seen on Dec. 8.”

But Avendano--who was severely injured during his campaign in a highway accident his supporters insist was an assassination attempt--said he would listen to Moctezuma’s proposals and forward them to the Democratic People’s State Assembly of Chiapas, an umbrella group of scores of peasant and indigenous activist groups that is sponsoring the civil disobedience campaign against the ruling party.

The assembly spent Saturday finalizing the logistics and security measures for its statewide protest, which it insisted would be peaceful. To prevent infiltration and violence by provocateurs, the demonstrators will use clearly marked banners and badges.