Rebels Free 20 Captives in Peru, Revise Demands

Leftist rebels holed up in the Japanese ambassador’s residence here freed 20 more of their VIP hostages Saturday as the guerrillas and government appeared to move closer to a negotiated end to the 11-day siege.

“We have made progress in resolving this grave incident,” Education Minister Domingo Palermo, the government negotiator, declared after the hostages trooped from the white-columned residence.

The release followed Palermo’s first face-to-face meeting with Nestor Cerpa Cartolini, the rebel directing the siege. In a further sign of a possible advance, a rebel communique read by one of the freed hostages did not include some of the guerrillas’ previous demands.

The released hostages included the ambassadors from the Dominican Republic and Malaysia. Businessmen from Japan and Peru were also freed.

But the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement still holds 83 hostages--including foreign diplomats, Peruvian Cabinet ministers and military generals--in a compound that apparently has been mined.

Until Saturday, the rebels had insisted on wide-ranging peace talks and the release of hundreds of their jailed comrades. President Alberto Fujimori has rejected those demands.

But in the communique, signed by Cerpa, that was read late Saturday, the guerrillas instead complained about stark conditions for jailed rebels and decried the fact that politicians and journalists keep comparing them to the country’s more violent rebel movement, the Sendero Luminoso or Shining Path.

“We reiterate our willingness to work out our withdrawal from the occupied residence through a dialogue,” said the rebel statement.

The hostages were the latest group to be freed since guerrillas seized the embassy residence during a cocktail party Dec. 17, taking hundreds of people captive.

Dressed in rumpled suits, the captives streamed from the embassy after 5 p.m., clutching their belongings in white plastic bags. Even as they smiled and clapped each other on the back, several turned to the embassy and waved to the men still trapped inside.

Once outside the walled compound, the men boarded government buses to go to a nearby hospital for checkups.

Palermo, the government negotiator, spent more than three hours inside the diplomatic compound Saturday in his first direct talks with the rebels.

In a brief statement, he said his talks with Cerpa were witnessed by the Rev. Juan Luis Cipriani, a Roman Catholic bishop and Fujimori ally who has been permitted to visit the hostages in recent days.

“In this operation, we managed to free 20 hostages. Those that remain are in good health,” Palermo said.

While he said the talks had produced progress, he gave no details. But the start of a dialogue raised hopes in Peru that bloodshed might be avoided in the crisis.

Peruvians’ concern about violence has been heightened by sketchy local newspaper reports of supposed military plans to storm the embassy residence and by an account of alleged torture of the hostages. But late Friday, Red Cross representative Michel Minnig denied that the rebels had mistreated their captives.

The Peruvian government appeared to be trying to adopt a business-as-usual air. The acting foreign minister, Jorge Gonzalez Izquierdo, announced Saturday that a visit by Ecuador’s president will take place Jan. 13 as scheduled. Ecuador and Peru have been moving toward rapprochement after a brief war last year.

On Friday, Fujimori named temporary replacements for Foreign Minister Francisco Tudela and Agriculture Minister Rodolfo Munante, both of whom are held hostage.