Rebels’ Demand Scuttles 2nd Meeting With Peru’s Negotiator

LIMA, Peru — A long-awaited meeting Sunday between Peru’s chief negotiator and Marxist rebels still holding 74 hostages at the Japanese ambassador’s residence here was canceled, dashing hopes of an end to the 26-day crisis.

Education Minister and chief negotiator Domingo Palermo told a news conference that the planned meeting was called off after the rebels told him it could take place only if he took with him a proposal to free about 400 jailed members of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, or MRTA.

“If I did not, it was preferable not to meet, as there was no possibility of talking,” Palermo told the news conference. “I really regret this.”

President Alberto Fujimori has repeatedly rejected this main demand by the Tupac Amaru rebels.

Palermo said he had sent a proposal to Nestor Cerpa Cartolini, head of the rebels in the residence, outlining the government’s conditions for resuming talks.

These included the establishment of a “guarantor commission” made up of representatives from the government, the MRTA, the Vatican and the International Committee of the Red Cross, who would jointly seek a peaceful end to the standoff.

Sunday’s scheduled meeting, arranged Friday, would have been the two men’s second face-to-face encounter since the rebels stormed a diplomatic reception Dec. 17, taking hundreds of hostages. Palermo and Cerpa held talks inside the residence Dec. 28.

Palermo said he would no longer be in radio contact with Cerpa, at the request of the rebels, because an unidentified reporter had leaked a tape recording of their Friday conversation.

He was still in touch via other means, he said.