SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I recall, as it started, people were attending a party at the Japanese ambassador's residence, when all of a sudden the rebels broke into the party and took people hostage. And after that everything broke loose. There were people that would show up in the window of that residence -- the rebels. And from time to time they would signal something or they would paint a message onto a sheet, for example, some words, drop that out the window. The Red Cross was permitted to go inside the residence and to attend to the hostages. When they would come out, that was our first opportunity to find out from someone who was on the inside what was going on. And they would tell us, to the extent they could, about how the hostages were getting on. And on the outside, you were left to talk to the relatives of these people who were very concerned about what was going on; talking to the president about how he's going to handle the situation -- would he use force to try to end this crisis, or try to seek a peaceful negotiation?</s>LUCIA NEWMAN, CNN HAVANA BUREAU CHIEF: We thought we were going for just a few days. In fact, the hostage crisis took months to be resolved. We spent our Christmas, our New Year's -- January, February, until April, in fact, when that hostage drama ended in a very bloody and very, very sad manner indeed.
CNN: 20: Peru Hostage Standoff, December 17, 1998