Peru

Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, living in self-exile in Japan, has been granted a Peruvian passport. Fujimori's passport expired after he fled to Japan in 2000 as his government crumbled amid a corruption scandal. Peru's Congress has since banned him from public office until 2010, but Fujimori has pledged to return to run in the April election. Peruvian prosecutors have also petitioned Japan to extradite Fujimori to face 22 criminal charges.

The Peruvian government announced Thursday that it has asked the International Monetary Fund to close its office in Lima. "I reaffirm that Peru has not held any negotiations with the IMF, that it has signed no agreement with that organization and that it has no intention of changing that policy," the official news agency Andina quoted Prime Minister Luis Alva Castro as saying.

Peruvian authorities formally asked Japan today to extradite former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, who fled to the Asian nation 2 1/2 years ago amid the collapse of his scandal-ridden government, an official said. Peruvian Ambassador Luis J. Macchiavello submitted the 700-page extradition request to the Foreign Ministry, said Peruvian Embassy spokesman Cesar Jordan. The Lima government wants Fujimori returned to Peru to face numerous charges, including murder, embezzlement and treason.

A 3-month-old boy was killed and three people were injured in four earthquakes that hit Peru, officials said Saturday. The strongest of the four temblors registered 5.1 on the Richter scale and was centered near Santiago de Chuco in the northern Andes, they said. That quake, which occurred Friday afternoon, caused a roof to cave in at one house, killing 3-month-old Julian J. Guevara. The quake also injured three people, destroyed five houses and cut off power in the small city.

First Interstate proposed that the heavily indebted South American nation repay $50 million it owes the Los Angeles bank with goods such as minerals, asparagus and textiles, a bank official said. The bank's trading subsidiary had been holding talks with Peru since May on a deal that envisioned repayment of up to $20 million of the debt in 1987, with the rest to be repaid later. First Interstate has lent about $100 million to the country.

A judge has ordered Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo to undergo a DNA test on Aug. 7 to settle a paternity dispute involving a 14-year-old girl, in the latest in a series of embarrassments and setbacks that have plunged the reformist leader's popularity to perilously low levels. Toledo, who took office last July, faces crises of confidence on several fronts.

Police deployed armored vehicles and squads armed with automatic rifles in the capital Monday to prevent the spread of unrest tied to last week's sale of state-run companies. While the armored vehicles patrolled the Pan American Highway, armed police mounted the road's pedestrian bridges. Meanwhile Monday, protests over the privatizations spread to Tacna, about 600 miles southeast of Lima, said city security official Hector Garcia.

Ollanta Humala, who campaigned to put Peru's economy in state hands, held a slim lead Monday in a tight three-way race for president, official results showed. With 79% of the vote counted, Humala, a 43-year-old former army commander and ally of leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, had 30.14%, election officials said. Two other candidates were locked in a close race to determine who would face Humala in a second round because no candidate appeared likely to capture more than 50% of the vote.

Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, flashing his trademark smile, was released Thursday from jail here in a move that stunned Peru less than three weeks before hotly contested national elections in that neighboring country. "Obviously, I'm very satisfied, very happy," Fujimori, looking somewhat thinner after six months in custody, told reporters. "I feel confident, and I'm going to be patient."

A well-preserved graveyard possibly a thousand years old has been discovered at an archeological complex of Incan and pre-Incan temples on the outskirts of the Peruvian capital, experts said this week. Archeologists have unearthed the remains of 30 people, including 19 still intact as mummies, dating from between 1000 and 1500, making them some of the oldest mummies ever found in Peru. They said the site had not been plundered by grave robbers and that some of the dead were religious sacrifices.