Rebel Leader Leaves Lima Mansion for Talks on the Fate of 72 Hostages

A Peruvian government negotiator and a leader of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement held their first official talks on neutral turf in Lima on Tuesday, taking a long-awaited step toward resolving the siege at a Japanese diplomatic compound where the rebels hold 72 hostages.

The face-to-face meeting before a neutral mediating commission was a concrete and hopeful development after weeks of virtual silence, stern rhetoric on both sides and several near-confrontations during which the rebels have fired shots.

The talks are expected to move slowly because the Tupac Amaru rebels insist that the government release more than 300 imprisoned comrades. Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori refuses to consider that demand.

The negotiations lasted more than three hours. They began about 3:25 p.m. Tuesday with a long-awaited scene: A white sedan belonging to the International Committee of the Red Cross pulled up in front of the besieged residence of the Japanese ambassador.

Roli Rojas, the No. 2 commander of the estimated 18 rebels, emerged from a side door and was transported by the sedan across the street to a house set up for talks with Education Minister Domingo Palermo, the government’s official negotiator.

Palmero met with the rebels once before on Dec. 28, in the ambassador’s residence.

For Tuesday’s talks, Rojas was accompanied in the car by two members of the mediating commission, Red Cross chief Michel Minnig and Canadian Ambassador Anthony Vincent. They were watched by scores of police sharpshooters and commandos deployed on roofs and sidewalks around the mansion.

Waiting inside were the other members of the commission: Bishop Juan Luis Cipriani and Teresuku Terada, the Japanese ambassador to Mexico.

The site of the negotiations has been outfitted with a metal detector, swept by explosives experts and fortified with sandbags--the latter measure reportedly at the rebels’ request.

The Red Cross declared the rented two-story house neutral turf in the battlefield superimposed onto the San Isidro neighborhood by the guerrilla takeover of the Japanese envoy’s residence Dec. 17.

While the Red Cross has played a central mediating role, Rojas is a new voice in the rebels’ talks with the government. Until now, the visible spokesman and commander had been Nestor Cerpa Cartolini, 48, a former union leader and reputed veteran of numerous terrorist operations whose wife is an imprisoned Tupac Amaru member.

Rojas, 34, is reportedly a trusted lieutenant of Cerpa. Rojas once admitted during questioning by police to participating in 20 terrorist attacks, police records and press reports say. He was convicted of terrorism but fled from prison in 1990 in a daring tunnel escape.

Rojas, whose nickname is “The Arab,” once worked as a collector of bus fares. Former hostages in the Japanese ambassadors’ mansion described him as a chain-smoking, sharp-witted and jovial commander of the guerrillas, most of whom are younger than 25 and were recruited in remote jungle villages.

He talked politics with the hostages, according to a published account by Francisco Sagasti, a Peruvian economist who spent five days as a captive. Rojas dropped out of college after briefly studying sociology but told Sagasti that “he had read a lot. . . . He said it wasn’t necessary to go to university to know something because Peruvian universities were very mediocre,” according to the account.

On the eve of the meeting with the government, he warned reporters via two-way radio that the negotiations did not mean a solution was imminent; he repeated the demand for the release of Tupac Amaru convicts.

In a more ominous message that increased tensions Monday, rebels hurled a grenade into the mansion’s backyard and fired shots. It was another warning to police who have waged a campaign of psychological warfare from the streets outside the compound, Cerpa later told reporters.

The 72 hostages include Japanese diplomats, Peruvian ministers, police commanders and Congress members and the ambassador of Bolivia to Peru.

Times special correspondent Mariana Sanchez Aizcorbe in Lima contributed to this report.