On Sept. 28, former U.S. Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche gave the following telephone interview to Gente magazine of Lima, Peru.

Q: My first question is with regard to the current conjuncture that Peru is living through. From your standpoint, what is really happening right now?

LaRouche: Well, what is happening is that Peru is caught in a storm, which is not caused by anything which has happened in Peru as such. The general problem is that we have two--as an American, I think I'm free to say this--that we have two idiots as front-runners for President of the United States. One of them, George Bush, is a part of the Bush family, which is a dedicated personal enemy of Bill Clinton, the present President. And the other one, Gore, is a different kind of an idiot, but Clinton is doing everything to try to save Gore's Presidential campaign, in order to protect himself from Bush becoming President. And, to be fair, there's nothing paranoid about the President's belief that, if Bush were to capture the Presidency, that Clinton's freedom, and possibly his life, would be in danger. The Bush family has a personal vendetta against Clinton, going back to 1992.

So, under these circumstances, Clinton and the U.S. government, and Wall Street, are agreed to do anything possible to try to postpone a global financial crisis until after the election. Now, one of the policies they're aiming at, is to eliminate the existence of the sovereign nation-state throughout the world. For the Americas, their policy is to have a liberalized drug policy, and to absorb all of South and Central America into an enlarged NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement] organization, together with the British monarchy.

So, for various reasons, as you know, in the recent period prior to the Mexican elections, Mexico, Peru, and Brazil were the three countries which were key to the defense of the sovereignty of the states of the Americas, in the face of this super-NAFTA program. So, at this point, Mexico is not eliminated, but in Mexico, of course, the situation has changed, and the intent of the crowd of Wall Street and London is to destroy Peru today, and Brazil the day after.

This hysteria is motivated by the fact that the entire world financial system is now in a process of collapse. They know that they can't do anything about it, but they're insane. It's like an empire which is about to lose its power, like Belshazzar on the day before the fall of Babylon. It's one of the most unusual periods in history, where this kind of thing happens.

Now, at the same time, outside the Americas, there is tremendous resistance to this Anglo-American policy, from continental Europe and Eurasia. The case of Malaysia is a good example. But you also saw recently, in the crisis of this past Friday, that the entire international financial system almost went belly-up. It was only saved by an emergency agreement. The next blow will come soon. We don't know when, but soon. In the meantime, Europe, Japan, and Asia are moving away from the United States, discreetly, and the atmosphere in Washington and in New York is absolutely hysterical. And this is a kind of mood which occurs when an empire is on the verge of collapse.

So, in this circumstance, you have tremendous pressure, where the United States is pushing the pro-drug-trafficking crowd throughout the continent. Although President Clinton is against drug trafficking, Gore and Bush are not; they are both for drug trafficking. At least, Bush's father was very much involved in drug trafficking.

So, we see the attempt to crush Peru by every imaginable method, including [former State Department official] Luigi Einaudi's method, and this is the kind of situation in which Peru finds itself at this time. It's a very dangerous situation, and they're going to try to play one force in Peru against the other, which is, of course, what Luigi Einaudi has done for decades. For three decades, Einaudi has been playing this game against Peru. So we're seeing another game, of trying to play a military faction against a military faction, and then the use of the pro-drug-lobby organization. Like [Assistant Secretary of State Harold] Koh, who is saying to the Peruvian government: "Die!" And when the Peruvian government says, "We'll have a new election," they say, "Die today! Don't wait until next year."

And this is one of those moments in history which tests the will and ability of nations to survive. And actually, my sympathy is with the sovereignty of Peru, because the nation has the right to survive and it is in our interest that it survive.

Q: It's undeniable that Peru's image abroad has significantly deteriorated recently, with the circulation of a videotape where Mr. Montesinos is seen handing a wad of money over to a congressman. What are the possible repercussions that this can have with foreign public opinion?

LaRouche: Well, this kind of thing is typical of dirty tricks run by intelligence agencies. There were obviously channels in Peru which were being used, traditional U.S. asset channels, which pulled this rabbit out of a hat. From an intelligence standpoint, I would say there are various interpretations which could be put upon the reality behind the circulation of this tape.

Because the fellow who is involved prominently in supplying the arms involved in the related case in question, in the accusation against the intelligence service of Peru, is well-known to me as being part of the George Bush international Iran-Contra drug-trafficking and weapons-trafficking operations of the 1980s. Now, that belongs to a special aspect of the U.S. military side of the intelligence community, part of the intelligence community that Bush was in charge of back in the 1980s, which I've exposed internationally, as others have. Therefore, the operation is the operation of that group. The author of the weapons trafficking, in this case, is an organization which is associated with Colombian cocaine- and weapons-trafficking.

Now, in the complications of intelligence and counterintelligence, this kind of story that I heard was broadcast out of Peru, requires a lot of sorting out, to figure out who did what to whom. It might have been a counterintelligence operation against Sarkhis Soghanalian, which might have been run by the intelligence services of Peru. A different construction has been put on it, but from the standpoint of my expertise, the construction that's been put on it is not necessarily true. So, I see that this videotape, plus this story of Sarkhis Soghanalian's operation, is now being used to try to destabilize the entire nation of Peru.

We have a situation, for example in France right now, which is comparable. The customary method of party financing occurring in France in the 1980s, are customary methods practiced in every nation of Europe and in the United States, and in other countries, too. So this became a big scandal, with the sudden airing of a video of this happening back in the 1980s. All kinds of passions are being displayed in the press about this "terrible scandal." But now, suddenly, someone in France came to their senses, and came out and said, "Let's stop this nonsense. We're not going to sink the government of France, just for the sake of one of these fairy stories."

So, in the main, the charges against Peru as a nation are, from my reading, nothing but the typical fairy stories that are run whenever one government wants to destabilize another government. This is mild compared to what Henry Kissinger had Pinochet do in Chile a couple of decades ago. And I always wonder, what's the difference between what the emissaries of Kissinger to Chile did, during the height of the Pinochet coup, and what the emissaries such as Koh are doing to Peru today? For any of us who know the history of dirty operations of this type in the past several decades, what I'm reading in the U.S. press about Peru, is typical of these kinds of imperial operations.

Q: Regarding what happened early this morning, Fujimori has travelled to Washington, presumably for a meeting with the members of the OAS [Organization of American States]. What does this really mean? Is it, perhaps, a sign of the Peruvian President's weakness?

LaRouche: I'm not sure exactly. I know what it means in terms of intention from Washington.

Look, you have this thing that happened in Colombia, the discovery of this road of the FARC leading toward Bogotá. The whole operation here, the operation against Peru, is focussed on making Peru give up its anti-drug, anti-terrorist policy. The objective is to bring parts of Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru under the control of the same operation that controls the FARC in Colombia. And Peru is a small nation, relative to the United States and others.

So, the President of Peru is trying to deal with threatening monsters who are out to crush his country, and him too. If he loses the battle, what will happen to Peru will be what happened to Colombia, or worse. You will have the opening of the FARC-type cartel--terrorism and drug operations--moving into the Pacific directly through Peru and Ecuador, and tremendous pressure is obviously being put on Peru, at this time, to capitulate to this. I can see the situation of President Fujimori, that he's in a terrible situation. I cannot exactly assess what he's doing, but I can smell what's being done against him. He's trying to get these guys off his back, and I don't blame him.

The question is, can we save Peru from being taken over by this narco-trafficking interest, which certain people in the State Department represent. The Secretary of State and others are pro-drug trafficking. We know this, as we see in the fight between the State Department and [Office of National Drug Control Policy Director] Gen. [Barry] McCaffrey [ret.], in the United States. So, obviously, if President Fujimori loses the fight for the independence of Peru, then Peru will tend to be destroyed in the way Colombia is being destroyed. And Brazil, too, although perhaps more slowly.

Q: We know that President Fujimori has called elections for next year, in which he is not going to participate. Does this mean that the battle against the drug trade here in Peru has been lost?

LaRouche: No, it does not. I think the President is trying to say: "Okay, I'll sacrifice myself, but you're not going to destroy the institutions of Peru."

One of the problems here is that Peru is now going to be hit very hard by the escalating price of petroleum. And this, of course, will hit very hard on certain economically vulnerable parts of the economy. You can see what's happening in Europe with the truckers' strike and the rest, who are protesting this. So, in the fight for the sovereign institutions of Peru, you have not only the external political efforts to destabilize and subvert Peru, but you also have this zooming price of petroleum, which also puts a factor of potential political instability in a very vulnerable period.

Q: Finally, given the situation in Peru, what concept, what view of the future can you point to? How do future prospects look?

LaRouche: Well, I think in general that we have to look at this from a global strategic viewpoint. We're on the edge of the greatest financial collapse in all modern history. It could have broken out on Friday. There were many things coming together on Friday which threatened to start a chain reaction, which could have sunk the U.S. dollar, and everything else.

Of course, President [Hugo] Chávez of Venezuela is not a personal friend of mine, but it's obvious that the efforts of the OPEC nations, particularly in the context of the recent Caracas conference, are useful to do what I proposed: Which is that there should be nation-to-nation agreements on petroleum, which would set a reasonable range of price. There are other issues of the same nature which are international, but which affect individual nations such as Peru.

So, we're on the edge of a situation which is like the outbreak of war. The danger is global, not local, not regional. As the crisis becomes worse--and it will become worse, rapidly--many people in Europe and elsewhere are already reacting the way the Roman General Fabian reacted to the threat of the Carthaginian occupation: to retreat when necessary, to maintain the integrity of the patriotic forces, and to prepare to defeat the enemy, the invader, at the point that the enemy's weakness overtakes him. Because very soon, perhaps within weeks, the greatest crisis in modern history will begin to erupt, openly. And those who are left standing, intact, when the crisis breaks out, will be in a fighting position. The nations which are standing with such forces, with such leadership, will have a chance then of surviving.

The main thing in a situation like this, is not to lose one's nerve. Not to hide in a foxhole, because someone may drop a hand grenade on you. And not to charge in desperate flight forward, because they'll shoot you down. I think the same spirit was expressed by the President and other forces, in dealing with the terrorist occupation of the Japanese ambassador's residence. I think this is the first line of defense of the nation at this point.

There must be no panic in a situation like this. I've seen a certain amount of panic being expressed in Peru, and I think that's the greatest danger to Peru, from the inside--this kind of panic.

Q: Thank you very much for your views, Mr. LaRouche, and we look forward to talking to you again.

LaRouche: Thank you, and best wishes.