TOKYO -- As officials search for ways to end the hostage crisis in Peru, one of the more intriguing possibilities is the notion of asking for help from Cuba.
It may be anathema to Washington, but officials in some other countries think that a neat solution might involve allowing passage to Cuba for the guerrillas who have seized the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima and some of their jailed comrades.
In exchange for freeing their hostages, they would be allowed to resettle in Cuba and might also be paid a ransom and given some access to Peruvian television.
One of many alternatives
This is just one of many alternatives, but although officials are exploring it, no one has a clear idea yet how realistic it is.
``It's a possibility,'' a Japanese official said. ``It would solve this peacefully. But I think the terrorists would prefer to go to the jungle, not to Cuba.''
Japan has diplomatic ties and polite relations with Cuba, and one of its former ambassadors is friendly with Fidel Castro, although no request has been made of the Cuban president so far.
Presumably if Japan and other nations were to plead with Castro to accept the guerrillas and end an international crisis, he would be delighted at the chance to play a statesmanlike role.
Freeing prisoners from jail and allowing the guerrillas to escape would be difficult for Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori to swallow.
But Fujimori apparently is most worried that if he gives in to the guerrillas' demands and releases prisoners into the jungle, Peru will again sink into the quasi-civil war and domestic terrorism from which he has spent the last few years extricating his country.
By sending the guerrillas and jailed Tupac Amaru fighters to Cuba, Fujimori would have exported his terrorist problems while safely resolving the crisis at hand.
Japan has some experience with exporting terrorists, and from its point of view the approach worked well.
In 1970, Japanese militants hijacked an airplane to North Korea, where they have mostly been living since. It has been some satisfaction to the Japanese authorities that the conditions for those hijackers in North Korea are apparently not markedly better than in Japanese prisons.
Then in 1977, in response to the hijacking of another civilian airliner -- a situation with some parallels to the present crisis in Lima -- Japan agreed to release six leftists from prison and hand over a $6 million ransom to free the passengers.
The hijackers and released prisoners ended up in Lebanon and other spots where they have been, from Japan's point of view, reassuringly distant.
Not eager for Havana?
Some officials noted that the guerrillas in Lima might not be eager to be relocated to Cuba, precisely for fear that they would be marginalized in the political struggle.
Moreover, while Tupac Amaru was originally inspired by Cuban communism and in particular by Che Guevara, the Argentina-born Cuban revolutionary leader, these days it seems to pay no particular ideological fealty to Castro or to Cuba.
Indeed, one of the hostages is the Cuban ambassador to Peru.
Yet if the guerrillas think that there is no possibility of winning their goal of having prisoners released into the Peruvian jungle, exile to Cuba might seem more appealing than dying in a firefight in the ambassador's residence.
Copyright © 1996 The Miami Herald