Stratfor.com's Global Intelligence Update - 19 September 2000
Fujimori Capitulates - Washington Exhales
Summary
Last week, a videotape was released showing Vladimiro Montesinos, head of Peru's National Intelligence Service (SIN), bribing an opposition congressman. The release of the video is most likely connected to the delivery of arms to a Colombian guerrilla group one year ago. The disclosure of the videotape was likely an inside job by a highly placed mole who may have been working for a U.S. intelligence agency. Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori has dissolved the SIN and announced new presidential elections. The unexpected decision has diverted public interest from an arms scandal that could potentially embarrass the United States, as Montesinos' SIN and military intelligence services had been cooperating with the United States in the drug war.
Analysis
On Sept. 16, President Alberto Fujimori announced new general elections, in which he will not be a candidate, and dissolved the feared National Intelligence Service (SIN) headed by his longtime political associate Vladimiro Montesinos.
Fujimori's bombshell announcement came 48 hours after Fernando Olivera of the opposition political party Frente Independiente Moralizador (FIM) released a videotape of Montesinos handing $15,000 in cash on May 5 to congressman Alberto Kouri of the opposition Peru Posible party. Kouri was one of 17 opposition legislators who switched parties after the April 9 elections in which Fujimori's party won only 52 of 120 congressional seats. Olivera claimed he has five more tapes that show Montesinos paying cash bribes to four more congressmen who switched parties and to a television media owner.
Fujimori blamed the release of the videotape on forces opposed to his policies. Olivera said he received the six tapes directly from "patriotic" army intelligence officials. The tapes, however, were probably given to him by a civilian official of the SIN and not by army intelligence officers. The Peruvian military does not have a tradition of loyalty to democracy. In fact, the country's top generals, all of whom are intelligence veterans hand-picked by Montesinos for their loyalty, were clearly stunned by the release of the videotapes. Further, the Peruvian military did not have direct access to the videotapes.
Someone with top-security clearance within the SIN, and with direct access to Montesinos, likely gave Olivera the tape. The six videotapes were originals taken from a library of more than 2,500 tightly-guarded, clandestine videotapes made by the SIN that reportedly compromise Peruvian and foreign diplomats, politicians, businessmen and journalists.
Olivera's party, the party of opposition presidential candidate Alejandro Toledo, made the videotapes public three weeks after an Aug. 21 press conference given by Fujimori and Montesinos. Fujimori announced that the SIN had smashed an international gang that fraudulently purchased 10,000 AK-47 rifles from the Jordanian army by posing as Peruvian military officers. The weapons were later air-dropped to the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) in southern Colombia. Fujimori said the gang planned to sell the FARC another 40,000 rifles. He also charged that Jordan's former military chief, Abdul Hafez Mureji Kaabneh, and two other Jordanian generals were involved. __________________________________________________________________
For more on Colombia, see: http://www.stratfor.com/hotspots/colombia/default.htm _____________________________________________________________
Montesinos, who had never before appeared at a press conference, added that senior Peruvian military officials must have been involved and that the SIN tipped off the Colombian government about the arms smuggling. In fact, the press conference was a staged attempt by Montesinos to cover up the fact that individuals close to him had carried out the arms deal with the FARC.
But the cover-up attempt unraveled quickly. The arms smuggling ring was detected at the end of 1999 by Colombia and the United States after the CIA traced the serial numbers of AK-47 rifles captured from the FARC by Colombian army forces in southern Colombia. The CIA confirmed that Jordan sold the guns to the Peruvian government. Further CIA investigations in Peru led to brothers Frank and Jose Luis Aybar Cancho. Their uncle is Manuel Aybar, the longtime head of Montesinos' personal security detail.
The United States cut off anti-drug aid and other assistance to Peru and maintained strong suspicions about Montesinos, yet the intelligence services of both countries continued to work together. U.S. military analysts considered the Peruvian military and intelligence service under Fujimori to be a bulwark of strength in a chaotic region. The involvement of Montesinos in arms sales to the FARC, however, made him - and the Fujimori government - a geopolitical liability for the U.S. administration. Washington is backing a $1.3 billion military strategy to eradicate drugs in Colombia, and the Clinton administration does not want the headache of an international arms scandal involving one of its allies.
The release of the videotape killed three birds with a single stone for the United States: Fujimori is stepping down, his corrupt Rasputin is leaving, and an arms scandal has been eclipsed - for now, at least - by Fujimori's dramatic capitulation. However, democracy has not triumphed in Peru. Whoever replaces Fujimori will not last without the military's support. __________________________________________
For more on Latin America, see: http://www.stratfor.com/latinamerica/default.htm _____________________________________________________________
(c) 2000 Stratfor, Inc. _______________________________________________
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