Peru's jailed Shining Path chiefs tell rebels to quit

LIMA, Peru, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Amid official warnings that Shining Path remains a menace for Peru, leaders of the guerrilla group have urged remaining militants to lay down their arms and apologize for their part in a war that killed 30,000 in the 1980s and 1990s, a lawmaker said on Thursday. 

"They wanted to ask Peruvians for forgiveness and they want to work with the government," said Yonhy Lescano, head of a congressional subcommittee on prisons who earlier this week visited rebel leaders on hunger strike in a Lima jail. 

One of the most high-profile prisoners involved in the protest at Peru's top security jail is the Shining Path's legendary leader Abimael Guzman. His partner, Elena Iparraguirre, and fellow rebel chief, Oscar Ramirez, are also fasting there. 

The prisoners, demanding a new visiting scheme and an end to prison isolation, have been on hunger strike for more than two weeks. They have also called for civilian retrials for rebel prisoners, many of whom were tried by hooded military judges. 

The Maoist group, blamed for massacres of whole villages in the remote reaches of the Andes along with car bombs and blackouts in the capital, Lima, was the primary leftist force whose bid to wrestle control of this poor nation and impose a communist state sparked nearly two decades of brutality. 

It gradually lost power after Guzman's capture in 1992 but attacks by small bands of rebels have flared recently. 

Interior Minister Fernando Rospigliosi said this week that Shining Path was still a headache for Peru, although he said it had switched tactics away from the violence that earned it a reputation as one of Latin America's bloodiest insurgencies. 

He said it now only counted 300 to 450 active members compared with some 10,000 militants at its peak. 

Rospigliosi also said rebels were working hand-in-hand with drug runners in the central and southern jungle. Peru is the world's second producer of coca leaf, used to make cocaine. 

"Guzman also said reforms were needed in terrorism laws. He said now was the time because there is a democratic regime," Lescano said. President Alejandro Toledo, who took office last year, has pledged not to yield an inch to rebels. 

The U.S.-trained economist took power after eight months of an interim government following ex-President Alberto Fujimori's sacking in November 2000 in a corruption scandal. 

Fujimori, who fled to Japan, was widely praised for leading a steel-edged campaign to stamp out rebel conflict. He is now charged with corruption and human rights crimes, but has said he would not get a fair trial in Peru and will stay in Tokyo. 

Lescano, whose sister and brother-in-law are jailed as members of the Shining Path, said one of the leaders he interviewed offered to negotiate disarmament with rebels operating some 330 miles (550 km) northeast of Lima. 

He added that the jailed rebel leaders had lost weight but had vowed not to budge on their hunger strike, which was supported by around 400 other inmates in prisons across Peru. 

Three leaders of the Marxist Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), a smaller rebel group best known for the 1996-97 hostage siege of the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima, are also on a hunger strike in the top security jail. 

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