Gov't not to use force to clear Mexico City demonstration

The Mexican government said Wednesday it would not use force to clear the blockade set up by left-wingers in central Mexico City to protest an alleged fraud in the country's July 2 presidential elections.

Since July 30, supporters of left-wing presidential candidate Andrez Manuel Lopez Obrador have been blocking important streets in the city -- Juarez, Reforma and Madero Avenues and the Zocalo central square -- pressing for a recount.

The official results, published a week after the vote, gave right-wing candidate, Felipe Calderon of the incumbent National Action Party, a slender 0.58 percentage point more than Lopez Obrador.

"I trust the words of City Mayor Alejandro Encinas," presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar told reporters at Wednesday's press conference.

Encinas, from Lopez Obrador's Revolutionary Democratic Party, had said he would negotiate with the protestors to make them leave.

On Monday, the first day back in school for around 25 million Mexican schoolchildren, the demonstrators unblocked the main crossroads on the avenues they are occupying.

Aguilar said that Mexican President Vicente Fox is determined to give the famous "cry of independence," known as the Grito (shout), in the Zocalo on Sept. 15: a yearly ritual recalling the shout that began the country's 1810 independence struggle.

He also said that Fox intends to lead a military parade "as scheduled" through the streets that are currently being occupied by protestors.