Army Making Bid for Coup, Peruvian Lawmaker Warns

A Peruvian opposition congressman who had defected to President Alberto Fujimori’s ranks charged Wednesday that the army high command was pressuring lawmakers to participate in a plot to provoke a coup within 20 days.

Congressman Miguel Mendoza, who defected from the opposition to join Fujimori’s Peru 2000 party, said the army intended to permit the return of the president’s deposed spy chief, Vladimiro Montesinos. Mendoza said Wednesday that he was quitting Fujimori’s party and added that joining it had been a mistake.

“I am denouncing that a group of congressmen from Peru 2000 have been pressured to sign letters of resignation, prepared in the army’s high command, to form a congressional group in favor of Vladimiro Montesinos,” Mendoza said.

He said the purpose “would be to promote disorder within Congress and throughout the country to unleash generalized chaos and carry out a coup d’etat within 20 days, which would allow the return of . . . Montesinos.”

An army communique Wednesday night called Mendoza’s allegations “absolutely false.”

Meanwhile, prosecutor Nina Rodriguez said Tuesday that she had moved to quash a criminal investigation of Montesinos, whose spy network has long been accused of human rights abuses and forcefully bending Peru’s democratic institutions to Fujimori’s will. Montesinos, who was caught on videotape allegedly bribing a congressman, has fled to Panama.

Rodriguez, a provisional appointee widely viewed as acting under Montesinos’ orders, argued that Montesinos was simply an advisor with no official title and could not be charged with official corruption.