Peru has ratcheted up the pressure on Japan to extradite its exiled former president, Alberto Fujimori. Frustrated by Japan's failure to give an official response to its two extradition requests, Peru raised the issue at the eight-day UN Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in Bangkok, Thailand, on 24 April.

"My country hopes that the government of Japan hands over Alberto Fujimori and shows the international community its true commitment to defend human rights and fight organised crime. No more rhetoric, the international community needs concrete action," Peru's justice minister, Eduardo Salhuana, said addressing the crime conference, which was made up of some 3,000 delegates, including justice ministers, judges, heads of police and representatives from international human-rights bodies and NGOs. The purpose of the UN congress, which is held every five years, is to improve inter-state cooperation against organised crime. Salhuana said it was necessary "to establish general procedures so that countries adopt a proactive role in extradition requests_" 

Salhuana's comments before the UN congress elicited an immediate response from the head of the Japanese delegation, Kunihiro Matsuo. "The government of Japan considers that we are in a meeting all together and this is not the place to point the finger," he said. "We think that the issue can be resolved at a bilateral level." He added that Japan was looking into Peru's two extradition requests but it needed more evidence.

Peru has been growing increasingly fed up with its lack of progress at a bilateral level with Japan, which it perceives as prevaricating. Salhuana chose to take Matsuo's remarks as a positive sign. He said it was the first time that Japan had given a public response in an international forum. This is a highly optimistic appraisal of the remarks. It is more likely that Japan was caught off guard by Peru's raising the issue and sought to get it off the agenda immediately.

There is good reason to suspect that Japan will not give ground: Fujimori enjoys Japanese citizenship and Japan has no extradition treaty with Peru. The Peruvian government maintains that Fujimori knew about and approved of the acts of the paramilitary group, Colina, which murdered 25 people in the early 1990s in La Cantuta and Barrios Altos.

Interestingly, on 31 March the Financial Times suggested that Peru had "all but abandoned" its efforts to persuade the Japanese government to extradite Fujimori after Denise Ledgard, legal attaché of the Peruvian embassy in Tokyo and the person in charge of Peru's extradition request, said she was returning to Lima and the government failed to name a replacement. 

One explanation for withdrawing Ledgard is that Peru has given up on trying to resolve the issue at a bilateral level. This is consistent both with Salhuana raising the issue at the UN crime conference and Manuel Rodrí­guez Cuadros, the Peruvian foreign minister, saying in February this year that Peru intended to present an appeal at the International Court of Justice in The Hague by June.

Another explanation for Peru's renewed vigour is that, shortly before Salhuana's comments, Fujimori announced on 19 April that he would return to Peru by the end of the year in order to run in the presidential election in 2006. The Toledo administration is determined to prevent this from happening. Fujimori, who plans to launch a soft drink called Fuji-Cola to fund his election campaign, was barred from running for office for 10 years by the constitutional tribunal in February 2005.