Peru troops seek Toledo ouster

2005-01-02 11:01

Lima - Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo on Sunday faced an ongoing armed rebellion by 150 army reservists, who took 10 officers at a provincial police station hostage and demanded that he resign.

The uprising, which began in southeastern Peru early on Saturday, was backed by a retired Peruvian army commander currently in South Korea, who sent a message urging the Peruvian people to rise up against Toledo's government.

Toledo declared a regional state of emergency, allowing him to use soldiers as well as police against the hostage-takers, and dispatched additional security forces to the area of Andahuaylas, an agricultural area 400km southeast of Lima.

Police said seven people were wounded in the hostage-taking - five officers and two presumed members of the ultranationalist rebel group, identified as the Etnocaceristas.

The leader of the uprising, retired army major Antauro Humala, said the group believes Toledo is a corrupt sellout to foreign investors, and demanded an end to inflows of capital from neighboring Chile, a traditional rival.

Humala is the brother of Ollanta Humala, an army commander the government retired three days ago. Ollanta Humala led an October 2000 military uprising a month before the collapse of ex-president Alberto Fujimori's government amid a corruption scandal.

"We are not going to leave the police station until Toledo steps down, but I also am willing to negotiate," said Antauro Humala. He said his brother was en route to Peru from South Korea to lead the movement.

In Seoul Saturday, Ollanta Humala issued a statement, cited on local radio here, calling on Peruvians to "rise up" against Toledo's government.

'On the margin of legality'

"It's the moment to rise up and to show the anti-patriot political class that the Peruvian people are capable of taking a virile attitude when wronged by a government that, day after day, loses its legitimacy and puts itself on the margin of legality," the statement said.

Toledo convened an emergency meeting of his State Council late on Saturday.

"This is a matter of state. I am in command of this operation," Toledo told reporters as he announced the regional state of emergency.

Cabinet chief Carlos Ferrero said the group was "closely linked" to drug traffickers.

Some 2 000 people were gathered outside the station in a show of support for the ultranationalists.

Congress' speaker Antero Flores Araoz told reporters: "There has to be a call for them to cease the takeover, and for everything to be settled peacefully; but if it does not happen, the government has the obligation to move to impose order with the assets democracy has entrusted to it."

Isaac Humala, father of the renegade brothers, told AFP the occupation of the police station was a "response to the national will, because the country is sold out to Chilean capital."

- AFP