
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, December 1, 1994                   TAG: 9412010088
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A16   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: MEXICO CITY                                 LENGTH: Medium

MEXICO'S NEXT LEADER CHOOSES REFORMERS

On the eve of his inauguration, President-elect Ernesto Zedillo announced a cabinet on Wednesday filled with free-market reformers, as well as Mexico's first minister from the opposition.

Zedillo, who receives the green-white-and-red sash of office today, has promised to complete the reforms that reshaped Mexico under his predecessor, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

U.S. Vice President Al Gore and President Fidel Castro of Cuba were among 63 foreign officials who arrived Wednesday for the inauguration.

At least 10 of the 25 officials named to the cabinet are economists, and three are women - Norma Samaniego, controller; Silvia Hernandez, minister of tourism; and Julia Carabias, minister of fisheries.

Mexico's two top negotiators of the North American Free Trade Agreement were named to key cabinet posts - Jaime Serra Puche, an economist like Zedillo, as treasury secretary and Herminio Blanco as commerce and industry secretary.

The NAFTA treaty linked Mexico with Canada and the United States in the world's largest trade zone.

In a surprise announcement, Antonio Lozano of the conservative National Action Party was named attorney general - the first opposition Cabinet member in 65 years of rule by Zedillo's Institutional Revolutionary Party.

Lozano's appointment ``opens the possibility of an important change,'' said ruling party President Carlos Castillo Pedraza.

Some 4,000 anti-government demonstrators, mostly peasant farmers in straw hats, held a peaceful protest rally in the capital's main plaza, the Zocalo.

``We are protesting the electoral fraud that is being committed,'' said Mario Garcia, a peasant from the state of Veracruz. ``It's time that ... democracy be awakened.''

Complaints of vote fraud by the ruling party in recent elections in the southern states of Veracruz, Tabasco and Chiapas will be one of Zedillo's most immediate challenges.

Zedillo's Cabinet choices were closely watched after his Aug. 21 election as a sign of how he would govern.

Named as foreign minister was Jose Angel Gurria Trevino, who helped renegotiate Mexico's crushing foreign debt in the 1980s, paving the way for the fiscal reforms launched by Salinas.

by CNB