Mexico says may be host to foreign guerrilla groups
REUTERS
May 29, 2001

MEXICO CITY – Islamic organizations that could have links to guerrilla groups antagonistic to the United States have been spotted in Mexico, the government's national security adviser, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, said Tuesday.

"We have evidence that organizations or people linked to Islamic organizations could have a presence here or be passing through," and those groups could have guerrilla ties, Zinser told a local radio program, although he declined to identify the groups.

International agencies had informed the government of the groups' presence in Mexico, he added.

But the security official added that Mexico would not become a haven for guerrillas and said Mexicans had no cause to fear guerrilla attacks in the country because of the groups' presence.

"Our duty is to find them and send (them) away from the country so they don't put roots down here or try to use our territory as a haven," he said.

The newspaper El Universal and other dailies reported that the groups now in Mexico could be tied to militant Hizbollah guerrillas based in the Middle East and members of Spain's Basque separatist guerrilla organization ETA.

The reports said the groups had arrived in Mexico's north with the aim of carrying out guerrilla activities in the United States.

Zinser was less specific about the potential threat, but noted the potential danger to U.S. points. "The geographical proximity with the United States puts us on alert so that we are not the passing-through point for any of these organizations," Zinser said.

But Zinser ruled out any possibility that Mexico's Chiapas-based Zapatista rebels could have links with international guerrilla groups.

The National Zapatista Liberation Army took up arms against the government in 1994 in the name of Mexico's 10 million impoverished indigenous people.

Copyright 2001 Reuters Inc.