Peruvian president promises to crush terrorism

Peru's president says he will use a "heavy hand" to fight terrorism after a car bomb blast outside the US Embassy killed nine people.

George W Bush is due to visit Lima this weekend and he says he will go-ahead with the trip despite what he calls the "two-bit terrorists". No group took responsibility for Wednesday night's explosion, the worst terrorist attack in Peru in five years.

Some US officials and Peruvian experts point to the Shining Path, a rebel movement that killed thousands until it was all but crushed in the 1990s.

President Alejandro Toledo left a UN conference in Monterrey, Mexico, a day early, telling leaders gathered there before he headed home: "The courageous Peruvian people will not allow terrorism to return in Peru."

"We will apply one heavy hand, and with the other, the law. We will apply all the necessary firmness and all the weight of the law," he said. The car bomb was believed to be made of a potent mix of dynamite, ammonium nitrate and a petroleum product such as fuel oil, a US intelligence official says.

Speaking in the Oval office in Washington, Mr Bush said: "You know, two-bit terrorists aren't going to prevent me from doing what we need to do, and that is to promote our friendship in the hemisphere."

The last Shining Path bombing in Lima was in 1997. The government says the movement still has about 500 combatants hiding out in the jungles of eastern Peru. Officials announced in December they had broken up efforts to form a Shining Path cell in the capital to plot bombing attacks, including against the US Embassy.