Mexico to allow poll obsevers

MEXICO CITY (Reuter) - President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, anxious to show that the presidential elections in August will be free of fraud, will propose allowing foreign observers, a spokesman said yesterday.

The proposal, to be made tomorrow at election-reform talks with political parties, will break a long-standing taboo about foreign observers. Mr Salinas' governing Institutional Revolutionary Party, in power since 1929 and frequently accused of fraud, has always ruled out foreign observers in the past as an unacceptable breach of Mexican sovereignty.