Peru's disgraced former president Alberto Fujimori announced today he intended to run for president again next year even though he faces arrest on 21 criminal charges if he returns home.
Fujimori's lawyer in Lima said he was working to get the charges dropped, and the former leader expressed confidence that he could win.
"I have 30 per cent support. I will return (to the presidency)," Fujimori told reporters in a press conference, according to Kyodo news service.
Fujimori fled Peru in 2000 at the height of a government corruption scandal and has been living in Japan to avoid prosecution.
Japan has no extradition treaty with Peru and has so far refused to act on Lima's requests that it extradite Fujimori to face charges of corruption and human rights abuses related to the death-squad murders of 25 people.
Fujimori picked up a new passport at Peru's embassy in Tokyo in mid-September -- the latest move in an effort to return and seek re-election.
But Peru's ambassador to Japan said he would be arrested if he got off a plane in Lima.
"He is a fugitive. ... He is not an exile as he says he is," Luis Macchiavello told Reuters. "He will be arrested, as simple as that. There are ... charges against him -- charges for murder, corruption."
Fujimori's lawyer, Cesar Nakazaki, who took over the 67-year-old's defense early this year, told reporters in Lima he hoped to get the 21 charges dropped before April to allow him to return without being arrested.