Firm Fujimori Is Familiar Figure

President Alberto Fujimori seemed confident, even buoyant, as he sat down with Peruvian newspaper editors recently to discuss the hostage crisis at the Japanese ambassador’s residence here.

But when a few editors pressed for more information, emphasizing that they had loved ones in the diplomatic compound, Fujimori’s demeanor suddenly changed.

“Well, what about me?” he snapped, according to one participant in the off-the-record meeting. “I have my brother in there.”

“It was the only moment when he turned emotional,” said the participant, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“Emotion” is not a word many Peruvians associate with their president, who shut down Congress in 1992, launched a fierce crackdown on terrorism and once reportedly soldered shut the doors to his wife’s quarters during a fight.

Since left-wing rebels seized the Japanese residence here Dec. 17, taking hundreds of VIPs hostage, the Peruvian president has projected a picture of unyielding toughness--living up to his image as a Latin American strongman.

As he faces one of the biggest crises of his government, Fujimori is showing no signs he’ll give in to the rebels’ demand of freedom for their comrades in Peruvian jails.

“He has a capacity to take tough decisions. There’s not an awful lot of sentiment there. There’s a lot of reason,” said Alvin Adams, a former U.S. ambassador to Peru.

On Saturday, the rebels of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement unexpectedly released 20 of their 103 hostages. The move came after the government’s negotiator, Education Minister Domingo Palermo, held talks for the first time in the compound with Nestor Cerpa Cartolini, the guerrilla who led the hostage-taking.

Since the siege began, Fujimori has kept a low profile. He has reportedly spent his days cloistered with political and military leaders. But associates say the president, a reputed workaholic who maintains his energy by taking 20-minute catnaps, is in peak form.

“Crisis situations put him in a fighting position,” said a lawmaker from Fujimori’s Change 90-New Majority party, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The pressure on Fujimori is intense. Not only is his younger brother in the compound, but so are foreign diplomats, Peruvian Cabinet members and military generals.

But Fujimori hasn’t wavered.

“You cannot talk about peace or an agreement while terror is used as the main argument,” he said in a Dec. 21 speech, his only public comments on the crisis.

Quietly, the president has sent clear signals that he’s not going to play by the rebels’ rules. One of their first demands was for phone contact with their jailed comrades. Fujimori not only didn’t agree but further isolated the rebel prisoners, cutting off visits by their families and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

When his captive foreign minister telephoned him from the residence shortly after it was seized, Fujimori refused to take the call, according to former hostages.

Some critics have charged that Fujimori’s inflexibility could complicate any resolution of the hostage crisis. But others say that the president is ultimately a pragmatist who won’t resort to force unless it’s absolutely necessary.

“He’s setting up the chessboard,” said Hernando de Soto, a former presidential advisor who fell out with Fujimori. “Before you negotiate, you have to decide the rules of the game.”

Fujimori’s tough attitude is hardly surprising to Peruvians.

Fujimori, then a university president who had grown up in a struggling Japanese immigrant family, ran a shoestring presidential campaign in 1990 that stunned his competitor, distinguished novelist Mario Vargas Llosa.

Two years after taking office, Fujimori dissolved Congress and disbanded the court system, saying he needed more power to combat guerrillas and to tame inflation, which was running at 7,000% annually.

Fujimori applied an iron fist to the country’s two left-wing guerrilla groups. Accusing judicial authorities of going easy on the rebels, he set up a system of military courts and a Draconian prison regime.

Fujimori’s tough stance brought condemnation from human rights activists, but it won him widespread popularity among Peruvians who had suffered nearly 30,000 deaths in the government’s war with the rebels.

Last year, Fujimori overwhelmingly won reelection after capturing most guerrilla leaders and turning around the economy with free-market policies.

Rarely has the president appeared to lose control of a situation. One of the few times came in 1994, when his wife, Susana, accused him of tolerating corruption.

After a messy public fight--during which she accused him of soldering shut the door to her palace quarters--the couple split. They have four children, including a daughter who serves as first lady.

The hostage-taking comes at a delicate moment for the 58-year-old president. As the economy has cooled, his popularity has been sinking.

Pressure is coming from all sides. On the one hand, the Japanese government has urged him to find a peaceful way out of the siege. Scores of Japanese--including businessmen, diplomats and the ambassador to Peru--were in the residence when rebels seized it during a fancy cocktail party. Japan is one of Peru’s top trading partners.

On the other hand, the president undoubtedly has faced pressure from the powerful army, which considers its victories against the rebels a badge of honor.

Fujimori has to consider the top members of his government trapped in the residence. Then there is brother Pedro, the hostage. While little is known about Pedro, the Fujimori family is considered close.

But the most important source of pressure, analysts agree, is probably public opinion.

“At the end of the day, he wants to leave [as] his record one that is not touched by a gesture of rewarding the terrorists,” Adams said. “It’s his policy, but it’s also his sense of what the public expects from him.”