INQUIRY ASKED ON DRUG FUND TO FUJIMORI

LIMA, Peru, Nov. 12 Peru's state prosecutor said today that he had
asked the attorney general to investigate a report in a Colombian
news magazine that President Alberto Fujimori indirectly received
election funds from the slain Colombian drug baron, Pablo Escobar.

According to a report published in the magazine Cambio de Bogota on
Saturday, Mr. Escobar, the head of Colombia's notorious Medellin drug
cartel who was gunned down in December 1993, gave a million dollars
to Mr. Fujimori's now fugitive chief aide and intelligence chief,
Vladimiro Montesinos, to contribute to Mr. Fujimori's first electoral
campaign.

The state prosecutor requesting the attorney general's intervention,
Jose Ugaz, is in charge of investigating the bribery scandal
surrounding Mr. Montesinos. The former secret police chief stands
accused of trying to bribe a former opposition lawmaker and holding
up to $50 million in Swiss and offshore bank accounts.

Peru's Congress on Monday is also expected to appoint a special
commission to investigate Mr. Montesinos, which could lead to a
separate inquiry about the president. Mr. Fujimori, who met today
with Justice Minister Alberto Bustamante, has not commented on the
reports.

Roberto Escobar, the elder brother of the drug lord, was quoted in
the Bogota magazine owned by the writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez as
saying, "When Fujimori was in his first presidential electoral
campaign, at the end of 1989, my brother Pablo gave money for the
campaign."

"It was a million dollars, more or less, which was sent in cash," the
surviving Mr. Escobar was quoted as saying. He is currently
hospitalized near Medellin, following a letter bomb attack that
damaged his eyes.

Mr. Fujimori's ex-wife, Susana Higuchi, denied that Pablo Escobar had
contributed to her former husband's 1989 campaign, for which she
oversaw the finances. "Definitely not, that's totally false," she
said.

Ms. Higuchi has since undergone a bitter divorce from the president
and is now an opposition lawmaker. Ms. Higuchi also said Mr. Fujimori
and Mr. Montesinos became friends only after they were introduced in
1990.