A SUBDUED New Year's Eve devoid of fireworks and festivity melted into one more day in captivity yesterday for 74 people held hostage by left wing rebels at the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima.
Wary of alarming the 20 odd heavily armed rebels, Lima authorities had banned the usual cacophonous celebration of the New Year with rockets and fireworks in the prosperous San Isidro neighbourhood.
New Year's Eve also appeared to dissolve chances of an early end to the stand off, although the guerrillas freed nine more hostages - first the Honduran ambassador, Mr Jose Eduardo Martell Mejia, and the Argentine consul general, Mr Juan Ibanez, then yesterday a further group of seven, including four Japanese businessmen and two Peruvians of Japanese descent.
The Red Cross identified the Japanese businessmen as Mr Makoto Sekiguchi and Mr Haruo Takahashi, from the Mitsui company, and Mr Yonezo Urata and Mr Toyoaki Toda, of Matsushita Electric.
Two Japanese Peruvians - Mr Jose Kamiya, of the Sistemas Sukiyaki company, and Mr Alberto Yamamoto, president of the government's national development institute (INADE) - were also among the released captives. The seventh was identified as Peruvian privatisation official Mr Juan Assereto Duaret.
The seven men, all wearing jackets and looking in good health, walked out of the building with chief Red Cross representative Mr Michel Minnig and Peruvian bishop Juan Luis Cipriani, who has acted as an observer in talks to end the crisis.
The doors of the ambassadorial stockade were opened up to the world on Tuesday for the first time since the rebels took 490 diplomatic and business hostages two weeks ago. The Tupac Amaru rebels held a surprise news conference inside the Japanese envoy's residence, with television cameras, journalists and photographers permitted to enter the diplomatic compound.
The leader of the guerrillas, Mr Nestor Cerpa Cartolini, wearing paramilitary webbing and with a red scarf tied around his face, delivered a defiant message to those assembled.
"The government has to reflect," he shouted. "We are not going to back down." With a gun strapped on his back and hands behind his back, he spoke to the press for more than an hour with the help of a translator, who repeated his comments in English.
The message was also relayed through a megaphone rigged up in a first floor window to journalists allowed on to a road near the residence gates.
Mr Cerpa reiterated the central demand made by the group for the release of all Tupac Amaru prisoners in Peru and condemned the country's harsh prison regime.
"All we have left is struggle," he said in Spanish. "We reiterate our request that our comrades be liberated."
He continued: "What we have is state terrorism that kills thousands and thousands of children from starvation." Conditions in jail were equal to a "slow death sentence", he added.
Mr Cerpa's voice boomed out across the elegant garden, urging the media to visit the prisons and report on the plight of prison inmates with the same concern that they had shown for the hostages.
There are now 74 captives held hostage, and the most dramatic scene relayed from inside the building was that showing a group of gaunt hostages standing in a row beneath a chandelier, and talking into the glare of the camera lights.
The host at the ill fated diplomatic party, the Japanese ambassador, Mr Morihisha Aoki, looked drawn and pale, and said he did not expect to be allowed to talk in Japanese. But he then proceeded to do so, with apparent permission.
He said the seizure of the residence had occurred because of his own "lack of preparation and foresight, and I would like to apologise to the Peruvian government."
Meanwhile, President Alberto Fujimori had broken a 10 day silence late on Monday night, appearing to soften his earlier stance against the rebels in a response sent to questions submitted by the Associated Press news agency.
Mr Fujimori said he would consider granting safe passage out of the country to the rebels if they released the captives and laid down their weapons.
Earlier in the day, a notice in a window in Japanese had invited the Kyodo news agency to enter the building. About 20 journalists followed the Kyodo reporter holding the agency's name aloft on a placard to the residence door. They formed a queue and entered one by one, presenting their press cards and disappearing through the Grecian columns of the front door.
A group of intelligence agents disguised as cameramen and photographers turned up inside the police cordon and tried to enter at the front of the journalists' queue but the Red Cross apparently vetoed any entry.