BUSH VOWS TO HELP PERU FIGHT REBELS AND KEEP ANDES REGION STABLE

LIMA, Peru, - President Bush pledged today to help President
Alejandro Toledo of Peru fight Marxist guerrillas on Peru's border
with Colombia, saying that countering violence and drug trafficking in
the Andes was crucial to maintaining the stability of the region.

"We will help him in this effort," Mr. Bush said at a joint news
conference with Mr. Toledo at the Presidential Palace, only three days
after a car bomb killed nine Peruvians outside the American Embassy.
"That's part of the reason why I'm here."

Mr. Bush also reaffirmed his commitment to an Andean trade agreement,
vital to the region but stalled in the United States Senate, and
announced that the Peace Corps would return to Peru after an absence
of nearly three decades.

Mr. Bush, the first sitting American president to visit Peru, arrived
here this afternoon in 90-degree heat and in an atmosphere of
extraordinarily tight security. American and Peruvian officials said
that the huge car bomb that exploded on Wednesday night, wounding 30,
could be the work of the Shining Path, a Maoist rebel group that
carried out a series of terror attacks here in the 1990's.

As Mr. Bush and Mr. Toledo walked arm in arm into the Presidential
Palace, traffic remained barred from the historic heart of Lima, a
10-square-block area of Colonial mansions and palaces, while armored
vehicles and police in riot gear patrolled the streets. All commercial
flights and even hang-gliding, a popular sport over the cliffs jutting
out into the Pacific, were banned during the president's visit.
Several square blocks around Mr. Bush's hotel, the Marriott in the
affluent beachfront area of Miraflores, were closed to both
pedestrians and cars. Just hours before Mr. Bush arrived, police fired
tear gas into dozens of anti-American demonstrators near the Palace of
Justice.

Mr. Bush was greeted with a 21-gun salute at the Jorez Chavez
International Airport, then went to the palace for talks with Mr.
Toledo, whose popularity is plummeting, even though he is trying to
reform his habits of frequenting trendy nightspots and showing up late
for work.

The two leaders said that they discussed trade, drug trafficking and
terrorism, particularly the intensifying war between Marxist
guerrillas and the government of Colombia, Peru's neighbor to the
north. Colombian government officials say that the guerrillas, the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, are increasingly
crossing into bordering states, including Peru. But Mr. Toledo went to
some length today to say that was not true.

"The evidence that we have indicates that there is no transfer of the
FARC into Peru," Mr. Toledo said at the foot of a marble stairway in
the neo-Baroque splendor of the Presidential Palace. But Mr. Toledo
said that as a precaution he had moved military bases from the border
of Ecuador to the border of Colombia.

Late this week, the Bush administration asked Congress to lift
restrictions on military aid to Colombia to help the government fight
the rebels. If approved by Congress, the change would open a new front
in Colombia for American military trainers by involving the United
States directly in the fight. Until now, Congress has restricted the
use of American aid to Colombia, which has totaled nearly $2 billion
in recent years, to fighting drug trafficking.

The Peruvian press has speculated in recent days about a possible
American military operation on the Peru side of the border with
Colombia, a subject that neither leader addressed in the news
conference, and which Mr. Bush sidestepped during an interview at the
White House last week with Latin American journalists. Asked if the
United States had plans for a military base in the Amazon jungle on
Peru's border to fight drug trafficking, Mr. Bush replied, "I can't
get too specific about placements. Let me just put it to you this way:
We're willing to cooperate to do as effective a job as we can on
interdicting."

Mr. Bush and Mr. Toledo also met here today with the leaders of three
other Andean nations, Colombia, Bolivia and Ecuador, to discuss the
Andean Trade Preferences Act, a law that for the past decade has
lowered tariffs for 6,000 products from the region. But the pact
expired in December and the Senate failed to renew it, greatly
irritating Mr. Bush. "It is stuck in the Senate," he said at the news
conference, "and I urge the Senate to act."

After the meeting between Mr. Bush and the four Andean leaders, a
White House spokesman cheerfully told reporters that one of the
leaders had complained about the Senate's slowness on the trade deal.
"The Senate is ma=F1ana-ing this to death," Sean McCormack, the
spokesman, quoted the leader as saying. Mr. McCormack would not say
which official had turned the Spanish word for tomorrow into a verb.

Earlier in the day, the president of Bolivia, Jorge Quiroga, told
reporters that his country had dramatically reduced the acreage of
fields of coca, the leaf used to make cocaine, and deserved trade
preferences from the United States. "We have carried out this titanic
job, reducing drug trafficking," Mr. Quiroga said. "That merits an
opening of markets."

Mr. Bush also said that he had not decided whether to resume drug
surveillance flights over Peru, a joint program of the Peruvian Air
Force and the C.I.A. The flights were suspended last April after a
Peruvian military jet mistakenly shot down a missionary flight,
killing a 35-year-old American woman, Veronica Bowers, and her infant
daughter.

"We are reviewing all avenues toward an effective policy of
interdiction," Mr. Bush said. "As you know, we had a terrible
situation where a young mom and her daughter lost their life. That
caused us to step back to take a look at our policy."

Before Bush left Washington, the White House announced that the
administration would compensate the Bowers family.

Mr. Bush also said that the United States - which recently announced
that it would triple, to more than $150 million, its aid to Peru to
fight drug trafficking - bore some responsibility for the region's
drug problems.

"The best thing that America needs to do is reduce demand for drugs,"
Mr. Bush said. "We've got to do a better job of convincing our own
country to quit using them."