Carlos Saul Menem

A federal judge issued an international arrest warrant for former President Carlos Menem, who now lives in Chile and has refused to appear for questioning in a corruption inquiry. Argentine authorities want to question Menem as part of an inquiry into alleged financial irregularities from federal prison privatizations dating back to his 1989-99 rule. Menem, 74, did not immediately issue any reaction to the warrant. He has said he was a victim of political persecution.

Former President Carlos Menem was greeted by hundreds of cheering supporters Wednesday as he returned to Argentina after months spent abroad to avoid arrest. Menem announced that he would run again for the presidency after an Argentine judge last week dismissed a warrant against him. Well-wishers shouted "Viva, Carlos!" as the 74-year-old politician arrived in La Rioja, about 600 miles northwest of Buenos Aires. "Many of you thought I'd never be back!" he said.

Argentine voters Sunday resurrected the political career of Carlos Menem, the former president incarcerated amid corruption allegations just 16 months ago, giving him first place in balloting to choose a new leader for this troubled South American country. Menem, 72, will face a Patagonian governor, Nestor Kirchner, in a second round of balloting May 18.

The 72-year-old former president stood on the balcony of the fashionable Hotel Presidente a blond starlet on his arm and an election victory in his pocket, just like the man whose name still dominates politics here, the late Juan Domingo Peron. For a few minutes just after midnight Monday, Carlos Menem lived a moment of political glory, staged with all the theatricality and panache for which Argentines are famous.

Carlos Menem, the scandal-ridden former president of Argentina, was contemplating dropping out of his reelection campaign Tuesday and conceding the race to his opponent, a turnabout that would come less than three weeks after he won the first round of voting and five days before a scheduled runoff. If confirmed, the move would ensure that Nestor Kirchner, the governor of the Patagonian province of Santa Cruz, is sworn in as this troubled country's next president on May 25.

With a combination of political vision, instinct and subterfuge, President Carlos Menem made the Argentina of the 1990s the Menem era. Those qualities, which lead political analysts to compare him to a chess player who sees 10 moves ahead, are on full display these days as a result of Menem's surprise announcement that he will not seek a third term.

Preparing for the first visit to Britain by an Argentine leader since the 1982 Falklands War, President Carlos Menem said Friday that he "deeply regretted" the bloody Anglo-Argentine conflict and hoped to further relations between the two countries next week. But his regrets, conveyed in the Sun tabloid Friday morning, served to open old wounds rather than heal them.

Argentine President Carlos Menem defended his government Wednesday against escalating accusations of corruption that have provoked an all-out political brawl here. Meeting with foreign journalists, Menem criticized as "irresponsible" those of his political rivals who have implicated powerful officials in scandals involving drugs, murder, fraud, judicial corruption and alleged infiltration of politics by criminal mafias. "There are no mafias in power," he declared.

Argentine President Carlos Menem was sworn in for a second term Saturday, pledging to fight the growing unemployment that has tarnished his "economic miracle" of fast growth and low inflation. "I am fully aware that this is what the people expect of me," Menem, 65, said in his inaugural speech in Buenos Aires. The Peronist leader, in office since 1989, faces daunting economic challenges but has unprecedented backing both in Congress and from ordinary Argentines.

President Carlos Menem has a long lead in the race to win the May 14 elections, but a new dark-horse candidate is coming up from the rear. Sen. Jose Octavio Bordon, a defector from Menem's Peronist Party, has emerged almost overnight as the opposition's best hope for forcing a runoff vote. Noticias magazine recently put Bordon on its cover, calling him "The Peronist Who Could Beat Menem." It is still hard to see how Menem could lose, but Bordon is just getting started.