At the beginning, because the lives of the hostages were at stake, then during this silent period we have taken several measures like not accepting the ultimatum of the terrorists threatening to kill our foreign affairs minister.

I want to assure your excellency that I am occupying myself permanently and jointly with my team to achieve a solution as soon as possible to this crisis, the principal objective being the safeguarding of the health and life of those who are inside.

I expect that after the election and the results that the international community will understand which was the framework of this process and under which law we have done this process.

And $18 million in three Japanese banks, completely false. That I have two factories in Panama, also completely false. This is part of the counter campaign of some people.

At the beginning, because the lives of the hostages were at stake, then during this silent period we have taken several measures like not accepting the ultimatum of the terrorists threatening to kill our foreign affairs minister.

Now we are showing to the world that this fighting against two terrorist groups was feasible and now we have an isolated case which doesn’t mean that terrorism is alive, as it was before.

What we are doing in fact is recovering and progressing and sustaining the recovery of our democracy.

The liberation of those who commit murder and terrorism is unacceptable.

We have shown, given these last three years, that we were succeeding in fighting terrorists. While during the first 30 years of the former governments they didn’t.

Poverty doesn’t imply necessarily violence.

The investor knows quite well that we don’t have anymore the widespread terrorism here in Peru.

One of the mistakes I made was placing too much trust in Montesinos.

In fact, this is a blackmail of the terrorists at the expense of the suffering of the hostages.

I have strongly rejected the proposal to pardon and transfer her to the United States. I do not have the legal power to pardon terrorists and even if I did, I would not use it.

Up to now we have faced external problems in an isolated fashion. One of these problems is precisely the drug trade and what has been the result? A very weak and fragile position.

I submit to you, Mr. President of Congress, my formal resignation as president of the republic.

We expect that in the next years, the economy will improve. And we expect that extreme poverty will drop from 22 percent to 11 percent by the year 2000.