APRA CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS PESSIMISTIC ON

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 LIMA 004915 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/16/2015 TAGS: PGOV PREL KJUS ETRD PE SUBJECT: APRA CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS PESSIMISTIC ON FUJIMORI'S EXTRADITION, SEE POLITICAL PERIL IN THE LAW OF THE SEA CONVENTION REF: A. LIMA 4861 ¶B. LIMA 4842 ¶C. LIMA 4596 Classified By: D/Polcouns Art Muirhead for Reason 1.4 (B, D) -------------- SUMMARY -------------- ¶1. (C) At a 12/15 meeting with Emboffs, leading APRA Congressmen Maurico Mulder and Luis Gonzales Posada said that: -- They were pessimistic about the GOP's ability to prepare a convincing case for getting former President Fujimori extradited from Chile; -- APRA strongly opposed initiating a debate on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in the midst of Peru's election campaign; -- Alan Garcia and (a debilitated) Lourdes Flores will make it into the second round of Peru's presidential vote next year; -- The U.S.-Andean Free Trade Agreement will become a hot-button campaign issue if it is signed before the Peruvian election; and -- The issue of Peruvians working for U.S. companies as security personnel in Iraq is off the screen for the moment, but will return with a vengeance if a Peruvian is killed. END SUMMARY. -------------- FUJIMORI EXTRADITION -------------- ¶2. (C) Polcouns and Deputy lunched on 11/15 with leading APRA Congressmen Mauricio Mulder (who is also Party Co-Secretary General) and Luis Gonzales Posada (former Foreign Minister in the Alan Garcia Administration). Mulder raised the pending Fujimori extradition (Refs A-B) at the outset, and said he was intrigued by reports that the former President had spent time in the U.S. en route to Chile. Poloffs assured him that this was definitely not the case and Gonzales Posada seconded this point. ¶3. (C) Mulder went on to observe that he found it ludicrous that some commentators were suggesting that Presidential candidates Alan Garcia, Lourdes Flores and Valentin Panigua should join in the demonstrations taking place in front of the Chilean Embassy in Lima demanding Fujimori's extradition. Mulder felt that Peru needed to focus on preparing a convincing judicial case, not something rife with errors, as had been the case with the extradition papers submitted to Japan. He expressed concern that the 60-day deadline for getting a request to Chile could result in a hurried, defective product, stressing that extraditions are 
complicated and demanding legal proceedings requiring great care, both on substance and on the technical details. Polcouns observed that the U.S. had received numerous extradition requests from the GOP over the past few years, and that we had encountered ongoing problems with quality in many of these presentations. -------------- RED LIGHT FOR LAW OF THE SEA -------------- ¶4. (C) Poloffs inquired about recent press reports quoting Mulder's as stating that the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (LOS) should not be debated now, in the midst of Peru's election campaign, as proposed by Foreign Minister Oscar Maurtua (Ref B). The congressmen became quite animated, vehemently declaring that APRA strongly opposed the Convention for two reasons: -- Peru's coastal ports are Aprista strongholds to the core, and fishermen are 100 percent against the LOS. APRA leaders recognized that adherence to the Convention would benefit Peru, but there was no/no way that they would run the risk of alienating their power base. Peruvian schoolchildren were taught from the first grade about Peru's 200 mile territorial sea claim. Ordinary citizens wouldn't grasp the similarity of the 200 mile territorial sea to the 200 mile exclusive economic zone contemplated in LOS. All they understand is that the territorial sea would be reduced from 200 to 12 miles, meaning Peru loses 188 miles. The Toledo Government won't be able to change 50 years of rote education overnight. -- Approval of the Convention would double ultra-nationalist Ollanta Humala's vote, as he would launch a jingoistic attack against LOS that would feed on Peruvian educational conditioning, and the anti-Chilean sentiment that went with it. It was totally irresponsible of Toledo to bring up this issue during an election year, and Gonzales said he had told FM Maurtua as much. -------------- THE ONCE AND FUTURE PRESIDENT? -------------- ¶5. (C) The congressmen were confident about former President Garcia's prospects in next April's election. They said that the candidates who might fill the dark horse, "outsider" role, i.e., Humala, National Justice party candidate Jaime Salinas, and their fellow-congressman Natale Amprimo (running on the Alliance for Progress party ticket),were failing to generate momentum in opinion polls. The survivors in the pack after the first round of voting should be Garcia and Unidad Nacional's Lourdes Flores. Former Interim President Paniagua, the newly-announced candidate of the Center Front, was being put forward more so by the ambitious politicians hoping to ride on his coattails into power than by his own desire to be President again. Although Flores was rabidly devoted to her canpaign, her support seemed to be leveling out, and as the front-runner, she was bound to be attacked mercilessly by the other candidates. Garcia's strategy would be to marshall his resources by running a "medium-intensity" race until the beginning of next year, and then pull out all the stops in the 90 days leading up to the first round. -------------- DEVELOPMENTS AT THE CONGRESS -------------- ¶6. (C) Mulder said there were several important items on the Congress's agenda between now and the end of the year. The Justice Committee, which he presided over, was still pushing to develop consensus on reforms in the justice sector, but consensus was hard to build, and the eventual shape of reforms wouldn't necessarily correspond to the recommendations made by the inter-institutional Executive Commission on Integrated Reform of the Administration of Justice (CERIAJUS). Mulder was particularly critical of the participation of "communist" civil society representatives on CERIAJUS, whose initiatives were opposed by the judiciary. Work on the national budget was pretty well wrapped up, the legislators said, but civil service and other state reforms were stalled and unlikely to progress under this Congress. Both congressmen complained that as the election season progressed, there was increasing difficulty in getting together sufficient legislators for plenary sessions, and that quorums for committee sessions were the exception, rather than the rule. Some members, they added, seem to have completely dropped from sight. -------------- THE FREE TRADE AGREEMENT -------------- ¶7. (C) Mulder stressed that APRA supports the U.S.-Andean Free Trade Agreement in principle, but cautioned that agriculture remains a sensitive point. He opined that the GOP needs to provide additional compensation for those sectors that could suffer from an FTA, particularly in the agricultural sector, in order to make the agreement politically marketable. Luis Zuniga, the new head of Peru's main agricultural lobbying group, CONVEAGRO, was a member of APRA, an indication, said Mulder, of the party's strength in this sector, but also of this sector's influence in the party. Gonzales noted the importance of farm workers as an APRA constituency in his home Department, Ica, and in other areas of the party's political base. Both agreed that if the FTA is signed before the election next April, it will become a hot-button campaign issue. -------------- PERUVIAN "MERCENARIES"? -------------- ¶8. (C) Mulder raised the issue of the Peruvians who had been recruited by a U.S. company to serve as security guards in Iraq (Ref C),and contended that the International Convention Against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries could be interpreted to prohibit such hiring. Polcouns explained that the Convention did not/not apply to the hiring of security guards, and pointed out that if Peru had concerns over the contracting of Peruvian personnel it could pass legislation regulating such recruitment in Peru. Gonzales agreed with Polcouns's assessment, and said he thought that a good portion of the fuss over this matter stemmed from the Defense Ministry's failure to consult within the GOP about allowing its facilities to be used for training these individuals. Mulder said that the matter had come up before his Justice Committee, but that it had since faded from view and he had no/no desire to highlight it again. That said, he warned that should a Peruvian be killed in Iraq, the issue will come to the fore again with a vengeance. -------------- COMMENT -------------- ¶9. (C) The Aprista legislators were relaxed, expansive and confident. It is clear that they are comfortable with the current political situation and with their party's prospects for the 2006 election. Their pessimism on the prospects for Peru submitting a strong extradition request to Chile for Fujimori is shared by most legal experts we have talked to, as well as those interviewed by the media. They were not hesitant to acknowledge that APRA's opposition to the Law of the Sea Convention is based on self-interest -- an unwillingness to alienate a powerful sector within the party -- but they made a good case that moving forward on ratification now would provide a spur to Ollanta Humala's election campaign. With elections looming and the current congressional session winding down (it is schedule to end 12/15),Mulder and Gonzales were probably correct in doubting that major initiatives will pass during the remainder of the term. Mulder was also on the mark in noting that the protests against Peruvian "mercenaries" in Iraq would become a major issue again should a Peruvian be killed while serving as a security guard in that country. END SUMMARY. STRUBLE