Fujimori Sees Election as a Blow to Guerrillas : Peru: The new president says his support was strongest in remote areas, where rebels are active.

Alberto Fujimori said Monday that his landslide election as president of Peru is a major blow to Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerrillas, whose 10-year war has claimed more than 18,000 lives.

In an interview with American reporters, Fujimori noted that his support was strongest in poor, remote emergency zones where the rebels have caused the most havoc.

“The people have shed their fear of Sendero Luminoso, of terror,” said the 51-year-old agricultural engineer and novice politician. “With this attitude, there are better chances of defeating Sendero. I want to take advantage of this, to consolidate this attitude of union among the people in the face of terror.”

Political violence left at least 10 dead Sunday as Peruvians voted overwhelmingly in favor of Fujimori in his runoff election against renowned novelist Mario Vargas Llosa. Unofficial exit polls gave Fujimori, an independent centrist, a margin of between 13 and 19 percentage points, largely on the strength of his support in the violence-torn interior where guerrillas had called for an election boycott.

Fujimori said that as president, he would involve the armed forces in construction and other development projects in the Andes Mountains and Upper Huallaga Valley, strongholds of the Maoist rebels. Using the military for development would also improve links between the people and the security forces in countering terrorism, he said.

Stressing his commitment to free-market ideals and to repairing relations with foreign creditors, Fujimori said he would travel to the United States and Canada this month to seek international support. He takes office July 28 for a five-year term, succeeding Alan Garcia, whose confrontational approach to the $17-billion foreign debt made Peru a leper in international financial circles.

Relaxed and self-assured, the Japanese immigrant’s son said the landslide margin gives him the political muscle to convoke all of Peru’s fractious political forces in a government of national unity.

He said he will put “all the political forces, from far right to far left, at one table to talk. We can arrive at minimum accords in various fields.”

He said such an alliance could include Vargas Llosa’s Demcratic Front and added that in a secret meeting, the two men had once discussed the idea of the writer serving in a Fujimori Cabinet.

Fujimori’s moderate, year-old party, Cambio 90 (Change 90), won a minority of seats in both houses of Congress on April 8, when Fujimori stunned veteran politicians by finishing second and winning a place in the runoff with Vargas Llosa.

The president-elect said a consensus government could be formed around common views that already have emerged on problems, including drug-trafficking, the guerrillas and the foreign debt. And he added that he will look beyond the parties to the ranks of technicians and academics to staff his government.

Fujimori drew much of his support from Garcia’s American Popular Revolutionary Alliance and other parties farther to the left, which tacitly joined forces to oppose Vargas Llosa’s right-wing coalition. Fujimori warned repeatedly that Vargas Llosa’s radical free-market program would most punish the poor, who already have suffered from years of decline and hyper-inflation that totaled 2,775% last year.

His campaign--he said he spent just $90,000 in the second round--portrayed the candidate as a simple Peruvian, sometimes wearing the ponchos and fedora hats of the Indian peasants in the Andes. His slogan was: “Fujimori, a president like you,” an obvious contrast to Vargas Llosa’s association with the well-to-do political elite.

He won so decisively, Fujimori said, “because I have transmitted an image that is the authentic representation of the expectations of Peruvians.”

The Peruvian presidency, he added, “is a difficult job, probably the most difficult in Latin America because the situation we find ourselves in is almost a catastrophe. Beyond the problems of terrorism, of poverty, of illiteracy, of hunger, now we have to add natural disasters; a drought so bad that it affects 50% of our agricultural production, and just recently an earthquake in the northeast.”

“I am assuming this post with the full knowledge that the task ahead is gigantic,” he added. “But I am entering politics because I feel a responsibility that an independent, a technician, should participate and change the style of government, the political construction of this country. It wouldn’t have interested me if . . . this were easy.”

The severe drought has led to water and electricity shortages in Lima, the capital, aggravating the repeated blackouts caused by Sendero Luminoso sabotage of power pylons.