PERU CONGRESS OUSTS ITS PRESIDENT, FUJIMORI ALLY

LIMA, Peru, Nov. 13 — Hours after President Alberto Fujimori left Peru on a
diplomatic trip, lawmakers ousted his key ally from her post as president
of Congress today, opening the way for debate on whether to remove Mr.
Fujimori as well.

Mr. Fujimori's departure for two summit meetings — one in Brunei and the
other in Panama — came as a corruption scandal continued to swirl around
his former intelligence chief and leading aide, Vladimiro Montesinos. The
president has been weakened by the scandal, which prompted him to announce
in September that he would step down in July after new elections in the spring.

Lawmakers voted 64 to 51 to remove Mr. Fujimori's ally, Martha Hildebrandt,
as president of Congress. Opposition leaders accused her of ignoring
demands last week for a consensus on the makeup of a congressional
commission to investigate Mr. Montesinos, who has been a fugitive since
last month.

The congressional vice president, Luz Salgado, also a Fujimori supporter,
said she had received a motion to debate a proposal to force Mr. Fujimori
from office for "moral incapacity," as permitted by the Constitution.

Hours before Mr. Fujimori left, Justice Minister Alberto Bustamante
dismissed as "nonsense" allegations that Mr. Fujimori had received $1
million from a Colombian drug kingpin, Pablo Escobar, for his first
election campaign in 1990.

Mr. Bustamante said Mr. Fujimori did not even know Mr. Montesinos in 1989,
the year that Roberto Escobar, Pablo Escobar's brother, says Mr. Montesinos
requested the money for Mr. Fujimori. Pablo Escobar was killed in a
shootout with the Colombian police in December 1993.

Roberto Escobar made the accusation in an article published on Sunday in
the Colombian magazine Cambio.

The scandal surrounding Mr. Montesinos began with a video leaked in
September apparently showing him bribing an opposition congressman. Mr.
Fujimori then announced that he would step down, signaling the end of the
iron-fisted president's decade in power. New elections are to take place in
April.

The video was the clearest evidence to date backing up fraud allegations
that marred Mr. Fujimori's contentious victory to a third five-year term in
last May.

Mr. Montesinos faces criminal complaints in Peru ranging from money
laundering, directing state-sponsored death squads and torture to skimming
profits from narcotics trades during his 10 years as Mr. Fujimori's top aide.

Mr. Fujimori went first to the small Southeast Asian nation of Brunei today
to take part later this week in a trade summit meeting of the Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation forum. From there, he was scheduled to travel to
Panama on Friday for a two-day annual meeting of Spanish-speaking and
Portuguese-speaking leaders.