Shining Path (PCP) Leader says People's War to Continue

Accompanying what it said was an exclusive interview in the Peruvian jungle last week, La Republica newspaper published a photograph of "Comrade Artemio" in a black ski mask and black T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan "Popular Guerrilla Army" and a hammer and sickle.

The picture resembled images in a television interview last year in which a man who said he was Artemio, who is believed to be in his 40s, announced the resumption of armed actions by the communist organization, which is on Washington's list of terror groups.

La Republica did not say how it could be sure of the identity of one of Peru's top wanted men, who has a $50,000 price on his head, or why, if he could be located by the press, he had not been arrested.

Reeling off a list of attacks since June 2004 on police, a judge and a military man, which he attributed to his men, Artemio told the newspaper: "We are continuing armed actions in four forms of warfare: agitation and propaganda, guerrilla combat, sabotage and selective annihilation."

One of the attacks was on a police helicopter supporting efforts to eradicate coca, which is used to make cocaine. Officials say Shining Path earns vital cash from the drug trade in the world's No. 2 cocaine producer, but Artemio said: "We don't defend drugs trafficking, only the coca producer."

He said judges and civilians were not being targeted specifically but had been caught up in attacks on the armed institutions he was fighting. "This is a civil war," he said.

The newspaper also quoted army Col. Carlos Cubas as saying Artemio was a "paper tiger" since there had been large arms seizures in the area that appeared to have reduced the number of his attacks.

Shining Path -- one of the world's most ruthless guerrilla groups blamed for more than half the almost 70,000 deaths when Peru was fighting rebels in the 1980s and 1990s -- has largely been dormant since the 1992 capture of its founder and leader, Abimael Guzman.

Shining Path rebels have occasionally attacked security forces in recent years including a car bomb in Lima in 2002 that killed 10. It kidnapped and briefly held 71 people in 2003.

Experts say Artemio is holed up in the central jungle with a few hundred die-hards. La Republica printed a photograph of armed, ski masked followers accompanying the rebel leader.

He said he was fighting for the release of Guzman, who was sentenced by a military court to life in jail but is now awaiting a civilian retrial. "I think he has already more than paid for his alleged crimes," he said.

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