Both Sides Seem Less Intransigent in Peru Standoff

Rebels offered a morale-boosting favor to their 83 remaining hostages Sunday, and rigid positions of both the Tupac Amaru guerrillas and the Peruvian government appeared to soften as the standoff neared its third week.

Members of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement holding diplomats and businessmen in the residence of the Japanese ambassador had stopped uttering their key demand that hundreds of fellow rebels be freed from Peruvian prisons, and they had not repeated their initial threat to execute hostages.

In a move Sunday sure to bolster the spirits of the hostages, the Red Cross said that the rebels will permit them to send messages to their families today and that it will deliver the replies Tuesday.

The guerrillas released 20 hostages on Saturday after President Alberto Fujimori sent a Cabinet minister to initiate direct government contact with the rebels. The move was a departure from Fujimori’s stated policy of not negotiating with “terrorists.”

Whether the negotiator, Education Minister Domingo Palermo, gave anything in return for the freedom of the 20 was not clear. He said only that he had a “casual conversation” with Nestor Cerpa Cartolini, the leader of the guerrillas who took over the compound during a gala cocktail party Dec. 17.

Guerrillas initially seized about 500 hostages. But in staged releases that began almost immediately, the number has been reduced to 83, a figure that analysts say is much more manageable for the 20 or so rebel captors.

The Dominican ambassador to Peru, one of those released Saturday, described his 12 days in captivity as stressful.

“We lived moments of great tension inside. One never knows on what thread life hangs,” Jose Ramon Diazhe said Sunday.

Sociologist Carlos Ivan Degregorio, an expert on insurgencies, said in an interview published Sunday that he believes the rebels need to keep releasing hostages to stay in the spotlight.

The rebels “have no other choice in order to stay in the news and keep the initiative,” he said.

Eloy Avila, who is acting Bolivian ambassador while the regular envoy is captive, said he found hope in the rebels’ actions.

“We think this is a sign that it is very probable that the problem will solve itself in the next few days,” he said.