MARK STEVENSON
Associated Press

MEXICO CITY - Leftist Zapatista rebels announced Wednesday they will voluntarily withdraw seven squatter settlements from an endangered jungle nature reserve, a move that may mark the end a decade-long standoff with authorities.

The rebels' insistence on allowing farmers to move into the Montes Azules nature reserve and clear plots there had placed the leftist movement on a collision course with environmentalists trying to defend what little remained of the rain forest.

While the rebels said they would not leave the reserve entirely, their decision to withdraw from the most isolated of their settlements may stem the steady invasion and deforestation of the Lacandon jungle, the largest remaining swath of rain forest in North America.

"This is excellent news for the Lacandon jungle and for the communities," said Ernesto Enkerlin, federal director of protected nature areas. "We celebrate this decision ... we never thought the Zapatistas were enemies of the environment."

After years of complaining bitterly that authorities were trying to force their supporters out of the reserve - and pledges of armed resistance to any attempt to remove them - the Zapatistas did an about-face Wednesday.

Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos announced that, with the consent of the squatters, they had agreed to relocate the camps to the more populated fringe of the jungle, where their supporters could get health care and education.

"The Zapatista Liberation Army has decided, with the expressed consent of the settlers, to relocate some of the Zapatista communities in the area, because their remoteness was a problem," Marcos wrote in a statement.

He said a few squatters camps would remain, and vowed that "if any of our communities is evicted by force, we will respond in the same tenor."

Of the estimated 38 squatters camps in the reserve, authorities expect 25 to be relocated or rezoned by the end of the year, leaving only 13 - not all Zapatista - illegally within the reserve.

The Zapatistas have refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of nature reserves, saying the land originally belonged to Indian groups.

However, Montes Azules - located near Mexico's southern border with Guatemala - was already the territory of one Indian group, the Lacandons, while the squatters came from mountain communities far away.