Al-Ahram Weekly | International

		Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 12 - 18 April 2001 Issue No.529
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Current issue \| Previous issue \| Site map

Open season
SINCE the silent flight of infamous Peruvian spy chief Vlad-miro Montesinos and the subsequent defection of ex-President Alberto Fujimori into exile in Japan six months ago, the country has been caught in limbo, virtually ungoverned. Lima has since been treated to a feast of eye-candy, thanks to the cache of se-ret videos taken by Montesinos betraying the numerous dis-races of prominent politicians regularly paid off by Fujimori's number two. On Sunday, the next stage in this salacious drama began, with the opening of polls for presidential and congres-ional elections. Monitors from the Organisation of American States (OAS), who boycotted last year's vote, pronounced elec-ion preparations a vast improvement.
Ahead in the polls, but running a tough race, is prominent op-osition leader Alejandro Toledo, an ethnic Andean Indian who is often credited with Fujimori's downfall. Toledo's rags-to-riches tale holds enormous sway with the country's poor, but he is dogged by accusations of fathering an illegal child and testing positive for cocaine use. Close behind him in the polls, and ducking it out for a probable run-off with Toledo, are former Congresswoman Lourdes Flores, whose greatest asset is that she is free of scandals, and former President Alan Garcia, whose disastrous presidency has apparently been whitewashed by his triumphant return to Peru after nine years in exile. He has surprised many by apparently edging out Flores.
Lost and found
RAISING further questions about the practicality of the US mil-tary's high-priority and costly programme of recovering re-ains of soldiers listed missing in action from the Vietnam War, a helicopter carrying an advance MIA search team crashed into a mountainside on Saturday, killing all on board -- nine Vietnamese and seven Americans. The badly burned bodies were recovered on Sunday, but families had not been officially notified pending identification. Judging from reports of peculiar noises coming from the craft, it is believed that a mechanical failure was the likely cause of the crash, although the flight was also delayed by poor weather.
Quang Binh province, 450 kilometres south of Hanoi, was heavily bombarded during the war and thus harbours many a crash site. Unfortunately, the area has claimed one more aircraft, a Russian-made MI-17 belonging to the Vietnamese army. Of the 1,992 American servicemen still MIA since the war ended in 1975, 1,498 are believed to be in Vietnam and an estimated $6 million a year is spent by the US on recovering their re-ains and returning them to their families. Despite the accident and the obvious expense incurred by a mission over a quarter century old, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has de-lared that the search for MIA in Vietnam will not falter.
Trouble in paradise
FOLLOWING an outbreak of attacks by Maoist rebels in the Him-layan Hindu kingdom of Nepal, the Communist Party of Nepal has again expressed its openness to negotiation with the ruling Ne-ali Congress Party. But the situation was tense in Katmandu this week, where the parliament has remained numb for some two months amid a corruption scandal surrounding Prime Minister Gi-ija Prasad Koirala. Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in the capital on the 11th anniversary of country's transition to democracy calling for Koirala to step down. The five-year-old Maoist in-urgency, led by the elusive Comrade Prachanda, has been largely underestimated, but is growing in influence with the millions of farmers and toiling underclass who remain untouched by democracy or Nepal's lucrative tourist boom. The group, inspired by and often compared to Peru's notorious Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), is reportedly active in most of the country's 75 provinces.
Compiled by Nyier Abdou

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