LIMA (Reuters) – A Dutch man who was arrested twice over the disappearance of a U.S. student in Aruba in 2005 is the prime suspect in a new murder investigation in Peru, which he has since left for neighboring Chile, police said on Wednesday.

Joran Van der Sloot was questioned after student Natalee Holloway went missing during a high school graduation trip in the Dutch Caribbean island five years ago, a case that attracted heavy media attention in the United States. He was not charged due to insufficient evidence.

Now he is wanted in Peru in connection with the murder of 21-year-old Stephany Flores, a Peruvian woman found dead on the floor of a hotel room in Lima on Monday.

“Homicide personnel are convinced, due to the incriminating evidence we’ve found, that this Dutch citizen is the person responsible for killing Stephany Flores,” said Cesar Guardia, head of the Peruvian police crimes unit.

Her father, Ricardo Flores, is a well-known Peruvian businessman and when his daughter disappeared over the weekend he told reporters he feared she had been kidnapped.

“My daughter was stabbed. I think there was some kind of fight. The autopsy will determine that,” Ricardo Flores told reporters.

Chilean police said late on Wednesday Van der Sloot, who is in his early 20s, crossed overland from Peru into Chile on Monday afternoon and was still at large.

LIMA (Reuters) – Latin American countries are entering a period of robust economic growth but should exercise caution if they decide to remove fiscal stimulus given uncertainty in the global economy, finance ministers said on Friday.

High-ranking finance officials from the Americas met in Lima amid strong growth prospects for the commodities exporting region, tempered in part by doubts about contagion from Europe’s financial woes.

“Although there is consensus that economic recovery is happening in the region, there are still many questions, and a lot of uncertainty coming from other regions such as Europe,” said Mexican Finance Minister Ernesto Cordero.

Cordero and Peruvian Finance Minister Mercedes Araoz called for caution before deciding when and how to withdraw stimulus measures implemented to offset the global financial slump.

“Looking at the impacts (of the crisis) we’ll look for the right moment to pull out the stimulus plans or, for instance, the right moments to act jointly if there were another external shock … if there were changes in commodity prices,” Araoz said.

In a press conference with other Latin American finance officials, Araoz also said inflationary pressures are unlikely to be a problem in the region in the near term.

“I think that most of us are not seeing the possibility of prices increasing rapidly,” she said.

LIMA (Reuters) – A Peruvian court granted parole on Tuesday to Lori Berenson after the U.S. citizen served 15 years of a 20-year sentence in Peru for aiding leftist guerrillas.

She was jailed in 1995 after being arrested on a bus in Peru on charges of being a leader of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, or MRTA, a leftist insurgency that was active in Peru in the 1980s and 1990s.

Her family always maintained that she was wrongfully convicted and never took up arms during a period of acute social unrest in the Andean country.

“The benefit of parole has been granted,” a court official said.

Immediately after the ruling, lawyers for the government said they would appeal, though she is expected to be released by Wednesday.

It also comes days before President Alan Garcia will pay a visit to U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House.

Wrapped in a shawl with her brown hair pulled back in a long braid, a quiet Berenson hugged her husband after the ruling at a prison in the Chorillos neighborhood of Lima where she has been living with her infant son.

LIMA, May 20 (Reuters) – Leading gold miners say they see “brownfield” exploration as a low-risk, cost-effective way to boost output in the medium term, as global economic uncertainty could make prices for the yellow metal wobble.

And, if prices stay where they are now, near all-time highs, adding onto existing mines would be the quickest way to lift production and profits.

Executives from Barrick <ABX.TO>, Gold Fields <GFI.N> and Newmont <NEM.N> told a biannual gold mining summit in Lima this week that exploration near existing mines — areas know as brownfields — is key in their plans to increase ore body.

“The best and the lowest risk expansion opportunities are brownfields … That’s why we’re spending a third of our exploration budget on brownfields opportunities,” Gold Fields Chief Executive Nicholas Holland told Reuters in an interview.

Other major gold miners told the meeting in Lima that near-mine exploration is also a centerpiece of their expansion programs in the medium term because developing a new mine from scratch typically takes more than eight years.

“An ounce found within 5 or 10 km (3 to 6 miles) from an existing mine is worth a lot more than an ounce that is remote,” said Barrick Executive Vice President Peter Kinver.

About half of Barrick’s exploration budget this year is slotted for near-mine areas, Kinver said.

LIMA, May 19 (Reuters) – AngloGold Ashanti <ANGJ.J> expects to receive a water permit this year for exploration work on its La Colosa gold project in Colombia, the company’s site manager said at an industry conference on Wednesday.

La Colosa Project Site Manager Aurelio Ganoza said the wait for the permit has caused some delays for the South African company, which expects to invest some $250 million in the project between 2010 and 2012.

“We’re expecting the water permits this year, providing there is luck and (the government) is willing,” Ganoza told reporters on the sidelines of a biannual summit of gold miners in Lima.

La Colosa was a greenfields discovery made in 2006 and is located 93 miles (150 km) west of Colombia’s capital city, Bogota.

If AngloGold obtains the water permit, exploratory works at La Colosa to conclude feasibility studies could conclude in late 2012. Mine construction could go ahead between 2014 and 2016, the company has said.

Ganoza said that AngloGold sees La Colosa starting production in about seven years and that the company is “very optimistic” that negotiations with governmental authorities regarding the use of water resources will come to a good end.

In February 2008, local authorities ordered the project suspended on environmental grounds. A partial permit was granted later by the central government.

LIMA, May 18 (Reuters) – Newmont <NEM.N> expects to open its Conga gold mine in Peru in late 2014 or late 2015, the company’s Executive Vice President Guy Lansdown said on Tuesday at an industry conference.

To bring the project into production, Newmont and its partner, Peru’s precious metals miner Buenaventura <BUEv.LM> <BVN.N>, would need between $2.5 billion and $3.5 billion in investments, Lansdown said.

“We look at going into production in late 2014 to late 2015,” he told mining executives meeting in Lima for a biannual summit.

He said Conga has reserves of about 12 million ounces of gold and some 3 billion pounds of copper. In the first five years of operation, the mine should produce between 650,000 and 750,000 ounces of gold, and between 160 million and 210 million pounds of copper per year.

Lansdown said that Newmont and Buenaventura are exploring for gold around the Conga project, where they have found several prospective targets. He sees Conga as being a low-cost operation.

The mining executive said Newmont is bullish on gold prices and sees the yellow metal ranging between $900 and $1,300 an ounce in the short-term and even medium-term.

Spot gold <XAU=> hit an all time high last Friday and analysts say safe-haven trades caused by global economic jitters should keep the metal firm. The metal is up about 20 percent since early February.

LIMA (Reuters) – Peru’s economy will grow between 6.0 and 7.0 percent this year and the IMF believes it will be the top performer in Latin America as domestic demand and exports surge, the head of the central bank said on Wednesday.

Julio Velarde, who spoke at the Reuters Latin American Investment Summit in Lima, said that given the good health of the economy, the central bank is likely to tighten monetary policy this year.

“We don’t need to foster private consumption with expansive (monetary) policies, we should move to a more neutral terrain,” he said, adding that although it is too early to say when or to what extent, the central bank could raise rates or increase deposit requirements.

Its next meeting on the country’s base rate, which has been steady at 1.25 percent since August, is slated for Thursday.

He declined to discuss timelines, but said: “One difference between other central banks and us is that we don’t just use interest rates, but also deposit requirements. It’s a mix of different monetary policy instruments.”

Velarde said the central bank forecasts that the economy will expand 6.8 percent in the second quarter and sees full year growth at between 6.0 and 7.0 percent.

“Basically fueled by domestic demand picking up, but also because we are returning to the export levels we had back in 2008,” he said.

LIMA, May 4 (Reuters) – Peru’s mortgage market should grow more than 20 percent this year and the benchmark interest rate could more than double by the end of the year from 1.25 percent, the chief executive of the Banco de Credito <CRE.LM> said.

Walter Bayly, at the Reuters Latin American Investment Summit in Lima, said Peru’s central bank is likely to tighten monetary policy in the short term and raise deposit requirements in the next 90 days.

“We should get to between 3 and 3.5 toward the end of the year,” Bayly said, referring to the benchmark interest rate, which has been steady at 1.25 percent since last August.

Bayly also told Reuters that he sees the mortgage market growing between 20 percent and 24 percent this year in the Andean country, driven by low prices, strong demand for houses and solid economic growth in the next five years.

“We’re convinced that after the (2011) elections there’ll be four or five years with (GDP) growth at 5 percent annually and … the financial market could more than double in that period,” he said.

The banker sees the financial market in Peru growing between 15 and 18 percent this year on the back of strong economic growth in the South American country.

Peru’s economy grew nearly 10 percent in both 2007 and 2008, although growth slowed down sharply last year as the global economic downturn slammed prices for Peru’s metals exports and cooled domestic demand.

LA PAZ (Reuters) – Leftist Bolivian President Evo Morales said on Saturday he had nationalized four power companies, including a subsidiary of France’s GDF Suez, in his drive to tighten state control over the impoverished economy.

Morales, a close ally of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, nationalized Bolivia’s key natural gas industry soon after first taking office in 2006 and has since taken control of several utility companies as well as the Andean nation’s biggest smelter and top telecommunications firm.

“We’re here … to nationalize all the hydroelectric plants that were owned by the state before, to comply with the new constitution of the Bolivian state. Basic services cannot be a private business. We’re recovering the energy, the light, for all Bolivians,” he said in the central Cochabamba region.

Morales said the state now controls 80 percent of electricity generation in Bolivia and was aiming for complete government control over the sector.

The decree read aloud by presidential spokesman Ivan Canelas said the state was taking control of the stakes that private investors held in four power companies, including Corani, Guaracachi and Valle Hermoso, the country’s biggest generating companies.

They emerged in the 1990s following the privatization of the state National Electricity Company (ENDE) and account for about half of Bolivia’s electricity market.

Corani is 50 percent owned by Inversiones Econergy Bolivia S.A., a subsidiary of France’s GDF Suez. GDF Suez was not immediately available for comment.

TIQUIPAYA, Bolivia (Reuters) – Big polluting countries must aggressively cut greenhouse gases and listen to ideas from small nations to reverse global warming, activists and left-wing leaders concluded on Thursday at a meeting billed as an alternative to the failed Copenhagen summit.

The gathering in Bolivia’s Cochabamba region was meant to give voice to countries and environmental groups that said they were excluded from an active role at the Copenhagen summit in December, when world leaders negotiated behind closed doors.

Activists say the big industrial powers sabotaged the Copenhagen summit by not agreeing to major cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and insist the next big climate change meeting in Mexico in December must include other voices.

The Cochabamba summit called for leading industrial nations to cut emissions by 50 percent, a much more ambitious goal than the pledges of cuts from 7 percent to 16 percent in the Copenhagen Accord.

“Developed countries … in the meeting of heads of state in Mexico in December, they’ve got to listen to the people, take decisions to better the lives of all,” Bolivian President Evo Morales told the summit.

Earlier in the summit, Morales drew controversy when he said eating chicken fed with hormones causes “sexual deviation” in men and that European men lose their hair because they eat genetically modified food.

Capitalism, genetically modified food and global warming were all targets at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, which drew some 20,000 environmentalists and representatives from 90 governments.