After he made statements that caused a crisis for the new president

Peru's foreign minister resigns after 20 days in office

Ector Bejar Rivera refused to apologize for his comments.

AFP

Peruvian Foreign Minister Ector Bejar resigned on Tuesday, just 19 days after taking office, over controversial comments he made on terrorism in 2020, which caused a political crisis for new leftist president Pedro Castillo.

"Ector Bejar Rivera has submitted his resignation to President Pedro Castillo," the press office of the Peruvian presidency said.

Bejar, 85, is a sociologist who once fought with Che Guevara's rebels in the 1960s.

A political crisis erupted after the media broadcast a video clip dating back to November 2020, in which he asserted that the Peruvian Navy was the first to carry out terrorist acts in the country, with the help of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and implied two attacks against Cubans, which occurred in 1977 , in Lima, and said that he was "convinced", without being "able to prove it", that the former Maoist "Shining Path" rebel movement, which sowed terror in this Andean country, from 1980 to 2000, "was to To a large extent the creation of the CIA and Peruvian intelligence.”

The presidency announced that "the head of state accepted the irreversible resignation of Bejar," without explaining the reasons for his departure or mentioning who would replace him at the head of the Peruvian diplomacy. These statements accelerated his resignation.

Ector Bejar took office on July 29 in the first government of President Castillo, who was elected on June 6, after narrowly winning the polls over his right-wing rival Keiko Fujimori.

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