A 19 DAY hostage crisis has settled into a routine of food deliveries, clean up and unofficial talks with left wing rebels holding 74 people, including Japanese industrialists and senior Peruvian officials.
Television crews, photographers and reporters waiting outside the Japanese ambassador's residence are renting apartments rather than spending days and nights in a nonstop vigil outside the building.
Rebels with one of Peru's two active rebel groups, the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, seized the building on December 17th in a raid during a gala reception celebrating the birthday of Japan's emperor, taking hundreds of Peruvians and Japanese hostage, along with numerous diplomats.
Women, the elderly and the sick were released early, but the pace of hostage releases has since slowed to a trickle. The last release was on Wednesday.
In recent days, the only excitement has been the arrival of the Red Cross mediator, Mr Michel Minnig, himself one of the released hostages, and Archbishop Juan Luis Cipriani. The two generally arrive in the late afternoon, stay several hours and then emerge without commenting.
Mr Minnig met the rebels on Saturday but left empty handed after two hours of talks.
Dr Cipriani maintains that his only mission is pastoral, ministering to the hostages, but he is a close friend of President Alberto Fujimori, whose younger brother remains a hostage.
The only other activity appears to be the daily delivery of 110 lunches and dinners and the clean up of portable toilets.
The estimated 20 guerrillas led by a former textile worker are demanding the release of some 440 fellow rebels and an easing of tough neoliberal economic policies in Peru.
Attention yesterday focused on the possible release of the Bolivian, Ambassador, Mr Jorge Gumucio, after the arrival in Lima of the Bolivian Foreign Minister, Mr Antonio Aranibar. Bolivia has said it will not free rebels in exchange for Mr Gumucio.
The rebels also hold the Japanese ambassador, the Peruvian foreign minister, a former Peruvian supreme court president and at least 10 top military and anti terrorist officials.
. Pope John Paul, in an apparent appeal to Marxist guerrillas holding 74 hostages in Peru, urged kidnappers and hostage takers, yesterday to free their captives as a "gesture of humanity".
The Pope, speaking to pilgrims, in St Peter's Square at his regular, Sunday address, said that liberaling captives would be "a gesture, that will fill with joy those who are waiting for it, but will also give peace to they [the hostage takers] themselves".