Nobel winner Mario Vargas Llosa rules out Peru presidency rerun

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guardian.co.uk, Monday 6 December 2010 20.07 GMT

Nobel literature prizewinner Mario Vargas Llosa said today he would not run again for the presidency of Peru, saying his 1990 candidacy was due to exceptional circumstances.

While in Sweden to collect his 10m krona (£600,000) prize, Vargas Llosa said he stood against Alberto Fujimori 20 years ago because the country's "very fragile democracy was shaking and on the point of collapse".

He added: "We had practically a civil war … we had hyper-inflation … it was because of those circumstances that I had the necessity of political participation. I certainly won't repeat this experience."

Vargas Llosa was among the leaders of the resurgence in Latin American literature in the 1960s. He lost to Fujimori, who tackled the country's inflation and Maoist guerrillas but is now in jail for human rights abuses.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/06/mari-vargas-llosa-peru-presidency