MEXICO CITY (CNN) -- In his first comments on recent military raids in the southern state of Chiapas, leftist rebel leader Subcomandante Marcos accused the government of waging a war against guerrillas and Indians, and he called any dialogue with the government useless.

"(President Ernesto) Zedillo destroyed any confidence in his government. Without confidence, it is impossible to reach agreements. If there are no agreements, why hold a dialogue?" Marcos wrote In a communique released Thursday, dated "July 1998 from the mountains of southeastern Mexico."

The government responded to Marcos' communique with a terse communique of its own Thursday night: "We hold a dialogue to find a peaceful solution to the conflict. That's why we hold a dialogue."

"We reiterate the determination to find a solution to the conflict in Chiapas through a political and peaceful path with dialogue and negotiation because, despite the negativity of the Zapatistas, that's what the great majority of Mexicans want," the Government Secretariat said.

Marcos, however, said the government's stated desire for peace was disingenuous.

"The word of war and the violent actions come only from the government side," he said.

Marcos breaks the silence

While the exchange of statements was terse and antagonistic, it is the closest thing the two sides have had to a dialogue on the Chiapas conflict in months.

Marcos has remained silent through a series of recent army and police raids on pro-Zapatista villages. He has not responded to efforts by government and independent mediators to get him to meet with them.

In fact, until he issued a brief message mocking the government Wednesday, the rebel leader hadn't issued a statement since March and hadn't been seen publicly since a videotaped statement in February.

In the Wednesday communique, Marcos likened himself to the elusive cartoon mouse Speedy Gonzalez, signing the statement "Insurgent Subcommander Marcos, alias 'Sub Speedy Gonzalez' or 'a stone in your shoe,' which is the same thing"

Attacks the government's position

In the Thursday communique, a 24-page document railing against the government, he claimed the Zapatista rebels, who staged a brief armed uprising in January 1994 demanding greater democracy and Indian rights, have only 300 fighters to face more than 60,000 federal troops in Chiapas.

He also blamed the government's harassment foreign human rights activists and Mexican mediation groups for the lack of talks between the two sides in the conflict.

"With its military and media campaign, the government has managed only to reduce the already narrow space for intermediate positions," Marcos wrote.

In the statement, he said the recent raids against pro-rebel townships in Chiapas, in which 10 people were killed and dozens of rebel supporters were arrested, were aimed at imposing a military solution.

He called Zedillo a "murderer with a presidential sash across his chest" and said government economic policy is "imposed with bayonets, jails and cemeteries."

Rumors about Marcos swirl

The government has justified the raids, by saying that the autonomous, parallel councils in towns that support the rebels are illegal and provocative.

Rumors about the health and whereabouts of Marcos have swirled wildly of late. Some reports had Marcos dead or seriously ill with malaria. Others had him in France watching the World Cup as a guest of former French first lady Danielle Mitterrand, who once visited him in Chiapas. Still others had him captured by the Guatemalan army or seeking medical treatment in Mexico City's posh Polanco neighborhood.

The government believes Marcos is Rafael Sebastian Guillen, a former schoolteacher from the Gulf of Mexico city Tampico who gravitated to Chiapas after spending time in Nicaragua during the rule of the leftist Sandinista government in the 1980s.