LIMA -- Interpol has issued a warrant for the arrest of Japanese-based Peruvian ex-president Alberto Fujimori on charges of homicide and kidnapping, justice minister Fausto Alvarado announced Saturday.

Fujimori went into exile in November 2000 as a major corruption scandal broke out in Peru, and resigned the presidency by fax from Tokyo.

The son of Japanese emigrants to Peru, Fujimori was granted Japanese citizenship in December 2000 and has sidestepped Peruvian extradition efforts, since Tokyo argues that by law it cannot extradite a national.

Whether Fujimori -- Peruvian president from July 1990 to November 2000 -- can continue to be protected by Japanese law would be taken up by the Peruvian Foreign Ministry "in due time," he said.

But Alvarado said the warrant should be enforceable anywhere in the world because the charges of homicide, injuries and kidnapping amounted to crimes against humanity.

The warrant "is an important step in Peru's efforts to get the former leader to answer to the courts for the acts of which he is accused," Alvarado said in a statement.

In recent weeks Germany, Costa Rica, Italy, Spain and other countries announced their intention to detain Fujimori if he attempted to enter their territories.

Fujimori has been wanted in Peru since September 2001, when a government prosecutor filed charges of homicide and kidnapping against him in relation to the Barrios Altos deaths and another allegedly state-sponsored massacre in 1992.

The killings took place in 1991, when 21 people, including women and a child, were gunned down at a house party in the Barrios Altos district of Lima.

The president of Peru's truth and reconciliation commission in September described Fujimori's refusal to cooperate with an investigation into human rights abuses during his term of office as an affront to the Peruvian people.

Fujimori "characterizes the activities of the commission as a circus ... it is an affront to the commission, to the Peruvian people, and to the victims of the period of political repression," Salomon Lerner said at a press conference, after failing to meet Fujimori in Tokyo.

The 12-member commission believes 30,000 people were killed in political violence and Peru suffered losses of 35-40 billion dollars during the 1980-2000 period with which it is concerned.

As part of its work regarding political violence and violations of human rights occurring during the period, the commission had scheduled meetings with the four presidents of Peru who held office during that period, the Peruvian embassy said last week.

"We plan to make public certain questions that we would have asked him, such as why the forced disappearance of 800 Peruvian citizens was a systematic practice between 1990 and 1993, and if Fujimori had knowledge of those disappearances, and also if he had knowledge of the barrios altos massacre," Lerner said at the time.

Fujimori claims that he is being politically persecuted.

In Tokyo, Japanese police on Sunday were tight-lipped the arrest warrant.

The former president's official Website had no comment on the warrant, and as of 0200 GMT Sunday there Fujimori's name did not appear on the Interpol Website.

Oral arguments began February 18 here in the corruption trial of Vladimiro Montesinos, Peru's feared ex-intelligence chief and former top adviser to Fujimori.

Montesinos is being tried by the anticorruption court on charges that he used his position as Peru's spymaster and Fujimori's right-hand man to help secure a pardon for Americo Perez, the brother of his ex-girlfriend Jacqueline Beltran. Jailed for two years at a military base, Montesinos faces trial on more than 70 separate charges, including corruption, illegal enrichment, human rights violations, arms trafficking and money laundering. (AFP)