Worldandnation: Peru's top spy lands in Panama

Peru's top spy lands in Panama

A formal request to grant political asylum to Vladimiro Montesinos is under consideration.

©New York Times

LIMA, Peru -- The disgraced spy chief who until recently was Peru's second-most powerful figure left the country Sunday, flying to Panama to request asylum in the wake of a bribery scandal that threatened to topple the government of his boss, President Alberto Fujimori.

The ousted intelligence chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, boarded a private jet accompanied by bodyguards and took off from a military air base in Lima just after midnight.

The flight, unthinkable until a bribery scandal involving Montesinos broke 10 days ago, appeared to be the result of diplomatic intervention by the United States, other Latin American countries and the Organization of American States. All have put pressure on Fujimori to introduce more democracy and have urged all sides in Peru to avoid violence after Fujimori's stunning announcement last week that he would hold new elections, in which he would not run, and would "deactivate" Montesinos' widely feared National Intelligence Service.

Peruvian officials refused to discuss the circumstances of Montesinos' departure and left it to the Panamanian government to explain the maneuvering that made it possible.

Montesinos, 55, a cashiered former army captain, has been Fujimori's most trusted aide, so powerful that the two men are known here as "the Siamese twins."

But that relationship and Fujimori's hold on power were jeopardized on Sept. 14 with the broadcast of a videotape that showed Montesinos paying $15,000 to an opposition member of Congress, apparently to get him to go over to the government side.

Two days later, Fujimori, after a decade of increasingly authoritarian rule that culminated in May with what many outsiders and Peruvians considered fraudulent re-election to a third term, announced a new vote, but without specifying a date.

Montesinos immediately dropped out of sight, and for a week it was unclear whether he was defying the president with the backing of the military or relying on Fujimori to protect him from opposition demands that he be arrested and tried on corruption charges.

At first Panama and Brazil were reported to have received and rejected Peruvian requests that they grant asylum to Montesinos. For decades, Panama has been a favorite place of exile for deposed leaders from all over the world, ranging from the shah of Iran to, more recently, Gen. Raoul Cedras of Haiti and former President Abdala Bucaram of Ecuador.

Panamanian officials said the first solicitation on behalf of Montesinos came Friday from Peru's prime minister, Federico Salas. After an emergency session of the Panamanian Cabinet on Saturday, though, Alfredo Castillero, a Panamanian Foreign Ministry official, said his government rejected the request to show that it was "against authoritarianism, fraud, irregularity and corruption, not just at the national level but internationally."

But after considerable pressure from abroad, Panama reversed course. Harmodio Arias, the country's deputy foreign minister, said at a news conference Sunday that the presidents of five South American countries, the OAS and "high-level functionaries of the United States," among them Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering, had all urged Panama to take Montesinos, to "facilitate the democratic process in Peru."

Arias took pains to make it clear that while Panama had agreed to allow Montesinos to land there, it had not yet granted him political asylum. A formal request is under study, the Panamanian official said, but he added that he could not predict "the moment or date" of a decision.

At observances here Sunday to commemorate Armed Forces Day, Fujimori made no explicit reference to Montesinos, referring merely to what he called "a week of political decisions of the greatest importance for our nation."

But he twice singled out the National Intelligence Service, which Montesinos controlled for 10 years, praising the agency for helping to liquidate two left-wing guerrilla movements.

"I have never navigated in calm waters, and that is a story known to all my countrymen," Fujimori said trying to play down the importance of the crisis. But, he added, "it can never be said of me that I am a man or a president whom circumstance has paralyzed or forced to buckle."

On Friday Fujimori sent a bill to Congress that would formally abolish the SIN, as the spy agency is known here, within 15 days of being signed into law. He met another key opposition demand that day, promising to announce the formal dismissal of Montesinos no later than Monday.

Nevertheless, Montesinos' departure was greeted with mixed feelings by the political opposition. A group of members of Peru's Congress released a letter Sunday condemning the arrangement to let him leave the country, saying he had no legal ground to seek asylum abroad, since he was facing well-founded criminal charges and not political persecution.

"The entire opposition and the nation have demanded and continue to demand a fair trial" for Montesinos, Congressman Henry Pease said. "They cannot give him impunity to escape."

But with Montesinos out of the picture, it now becomes easier for the Fujimori government to negotiate an accord with the opposition for new elections. Opposition parties vowed to boycott a "national dialogue" sponsored by the OAS until Montesinos was fired, arguing that his control of the electoral commission made a clean and fair vote impossible.