TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, Mexico Hundreds of cheering supporters greeted leaders of the Zapatista rebel group as they arrived here Sunday on a 3,000-kilometer (1,900-mile) march to the capital to promote greater rights for Mexico's Indians, AFP reported.

Led by an air-conditioned tourist bus carrying Zapatista leader "Subcomandante Marcos" and 24 other top guerrillas, the marchers set out from San Cristobal, where they first launched their revolt in January 1994.

Once in Mexico City, the marchers plan to lobby Congress for an indigenous rights bill.

Hundreds of Mexican federal police officers -- reinforced with two police helicopters -- escorted the marchers to guarantee their safety.

The Zapatista struggle is "for the dignity of the Indian people of Mexico," Marcos told the crowd that filled the central plaza of Tuxtla Gutierrez, the Chiapas State capital.

On Saturday, a vanguard of thousands of members of Mayan communities streamed into San Cristobal to join U.S. citizens, Europeans and Mexicans offering their support to the march, which could determine the political future of the Chiapas rebels.

Jose Perez, a textile worker from the conflict zone, said he had waited seven years for the chance to see Marcos in the flesh.

"I wanted to see this man who has come to us with so many ideas, said Perez, a Tzotzil Indian from the Chiapas highland town of Chenalo.

The foreigners in the crowd said they felt their presence was important, to demonstrate solidarity with the cause for the people of southern Mexico.

"The Zapatista movement is relevant to the whole world because it's symbolic of (protest against) the worst aspects of the global economy," said Judy Wicks, a Philadelphia restaurant owner and member of a business group that supports the Indians by purchasing organic coffee and other goods from them.

The Zapatista march would be "a bridge to peace and to the vindication of indigenous people's rights," Mexican President Vicente Fox said Friday.

Fox has put his reputation on the line with his overtures to the Zapatistas, who generally are reviled by his conservative National Action Party.

"My priority, in these coming days is that the Zapatista march turns out well," Fox said. "I'm putting at risk my presidency, all my political capital. We have to give Marcos a chance."

Early Saturday, in ceremony to mark the beginning of the march, Marcos handed his gun to another rebel commander in front of hundreds of supporters.

He then got into a truck and left his headquarters in the Chiapas rain forest, heading for the small town of San Cristobal de Las Casas.

Dialogue between government and rebel representatives broke off in September 1996 over the Zapatistas' demand for the new legislation on indigenous rights.

Since he led a rag-tag band of rebels in the 1994 uprising, the pipe-smoking Marcos has become a near-idol of the international left, and has cultivated an image reminiscent of legendary revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara.

The Zapatistas and government troops have not engaged in fighting since the initial uprising, but hundreds of Chiapans have died in local feuds and thousands more made refugees as a result of the divisions between rebel and government supporters, human rights groups say.

Marcos said this week that resumed dialogue could follow the march if the government moves on releasing more Zapatista sympathizers from jail, and on closing down more army bases set up in Chiapas since 1994.

-------------------------------------------------- ----------