Mexico City mayor returns to work
Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador returned to work Monday in defiance of the federal government, which said his act was a violation of law.

The popular mayor, a front-runner in the July 2006 presidential elections, had not been to his office after the congress stripped him of immunity from criminal prosecution on April 7.

President Vicente Fox's government said the mayor automatically lost his job when his immunity was stripped, but Lopez Obrador insisted that he was still the mayor of the Mexican capital.

At a press conference on Monday morning, the mayor thanked the people of the city for their support and said he was prepared to talk with his adversaries.

Lopez Obrador, of the center-left Democratic Revolution Party, accused Fox and ex-President Carlos Salinas of launching a campaign to prevent him from joining the presidential elections.

On Sunday, hundreds of thousands of Mexicans protested against the removal of the mayor's immunity that could put him on trial and knock him out of the 2006 presidential poll.

Ruben Aguilar, the spokesman for Fox, said Monday that Lopez Obrador's return to office "was a provocation and a violation of laws."

However, Lopez Obrador said he was still mayor because he had not been formally indicted and the Supreme Court had accepted an appeal by the Federal District Legislative Assembly against the decision to fire him from the post he obtained through a popular election.