The Peruvian hostage crisis looked further than ever from a solution Sunday with no exchanges between Marxist guerrillas holding 74 hostages and President Alberto Fujimori's government.
Besides Red Cross officials shuttling to and fro with supplies and medicines, the only contact was a two-hour visit by Roman Catholic Bishop Juan Luis Cipriani, who entered the besieged Japanese ambassador's residence to celebrate Mass.Cipriani, a close friend of Fujimori's, was not acting as a formal channel of negotiation, but some Peruvians believe he is maintaining a tenuous line of official contact with the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) guerrillas who stormed the diplomatic residence 19 days ago.
Congregations throughout Peru prayed and held vigils for the captives. Thousands of Lima residents flew Peru's red-and-white flag outside their houses in solidarity.
In an apparent appeal to the MRTA guerrillas, Pope John Paul II urged kidnappers and hostage-takers to free their captives as a "gesture of humanity."
"The mercy of Christ, born of human weakness, urges hostage-takers to fulfill this gesture of humanity - free these people," the pope told pilgrims in St Peter's Square at his regular Sunday address.
Opposition legislator Maximo San Roman Caceres proposed that the pontiff mediate a peaceful end to the crisis.
Others have proposed former U.S. President Jimmy Carter as a broker, while the guerrillas have said they would accept Cuba's Fidel Castro or Russian leader Boris Yeltsin.
"Both the MRTA and the government through President Fujimori have shown irreconcilable positions," said Caceres, a former Peruvian vice president under Fujimori.
"The process of dialogue . . . has become bogged down, and there is no immediate solution," he said. "It is putting at serious risk the life of many human beings."
Bolivian Foreign Minister Antonio Aranibar arrived in Lima Sunday to try to help bring about a solution. Bolivian ambassador Jorge Gumucio is among the captives.
At a news conference, Aranibar backed Fujimori's tough stance and ruled out releasing four MRTA prisoners in Bolivia.
But he appealed to the rebels to take care of Gumucio who "suffers from high blood pressure, is diabetic, requiring special care, and also has in his medical history a heart attack."
Gumucio and Japanese envoy Morihisa Aoki are the only two ambassadors left in the residence. Their fellow hostages include Fujimori's brother, top Peruvian government officials and about two dozen Japanese diplomats and businessmen.
The standoff began on Dec. 17 when about 20 well-armed MRTA rebels burst in to a cocktail party attended by 500 people at the residence honoring Japanese Emperor Akihito.