PERU'S TOLEDO SLAMS REPORT OF COCAINE USE

LIMA: Two weeks before Peruvian elections, leading magazine Caretas reported
on Thursday that front-running presidential candidate Alejandro Toledo
tested positive for cocaine in a hospital urine analysis in 1998.

Toledo slammed the report as a rehash of news released last year by his
wife, Elaine Karp, after he was briefly kidnapped, drugged and possibly
photographed in "compromising positions'' in a blackmail attempt.

Karp said during the 2000 presidential campaign she suspected that secret
agents of former President Alberto Fujimori's fugitive spy chief Vladimiro
Montesinos were behind the alleged kidnapping.

She said Toledo returned home one day in 1998 drugged and disoriented.

"Elaine reported my disappearance and we went to the clinic. I went
personally, I gave my true identity . . . I don't want to be cannon fodder .
. . let's not fall into dirty tricks,'' Toledo told a packed news
conference.

He did not say whether he had a drug test and he never mentioned the word
"cocaine'' in his statement.

The candidate did not answer allegations in the Caretas report that he had
tried to stop its publication by offering the reporter a job in his campaign
team.

Toledo, a centrist, is about 10 points ahead of his nearest rival, Lourdes
Flores, and a favourite to win the April 8 vote.--Reuters