The Oaxaca People's Popular Assembly (APPO), a group calling for the resignation of Ulises Ruiz, governor of Mexico's southern state Oaxaca, on Monday called for a national strike on Friday.

 

A national strike would show that it is the people who make the country move, but not interest groups, APPO official Joel Gomez said at a meeting at Mexico National Autonomous University (UNAM).

 

The embattled Oaxaca city had been caught with protests and clashes since June as people protested against Ruiz's rough handling of a teacher strike.

 

Ruiz had so far refused to step down despite pressure from Mexico's Congress.

 

Protestors had seized and paralyzed much of the Oaxaca city, the poor state's capital, after the original teachers' strike mushroomed into a broad protest demanding the resignation of Ruiz.

 

In late October, the Mexican Government ordered the Federal Preventative Police (PFP) to evict the protestors, and PFP officers had remained in charge of the city center since then.

 

Also on Monday, 60 people, apparently UNAM students, clashed with riot police in Mexico City, local radio reported, saying that at least three policemen and a journalist were injured in the incident.

 

Mexico City's public security department said the students had begun the attack, throwing sticks, stones and fireworks at police officers.

 

The Oaxaca authorities said the APPO's protests had cost the state about 300 million pesos (US$27 million).

 

Meanwhile, there was no sign of reconciliation between the APPO protesters and Ruiz, with APPO vowing to re-establish a protest camp from which they were dislodged during running street battles with police and the governor threatening to use "all the weight of the law" against violent protests.

 

(Xinhua News Agency November 28, 2006)