Heading off gathering rumours in Lima, and wary of the fate of his predecessor, the President of Peru has admitted that he had a child out of wedlock last year, telling national television: "The President does not have a personal or private life".

Alan García, who won the Peruvian presidency for a second time in June after 16 years in the political wilderness, said that his child, a son, was born in February last year, the result of an 18-month relationship he had when he was separated from his wife, Pilar Nores, with whom he is now reunited.

The story, circulating in Lima for weeks, reads like a gentler reprise of the scandal that doomed Alejandro Toledo, the last Peruvian president. For a decade, Señor Toledo doggedly refused to recognise an illegitimate daughter, a decision that cost him the trust and support of millions of voters.

In a short announcement made on the steps of the Government Palace in the capital, Señor García said: "Between April 2004 and October 2005, when I was separated, I had a relationship with a high-quality person. From that relationship a child was born on February 2005. I recognized that boy, as one should, from the moment he was born."

The President said that the boy, whose mother has been named in the Peruvian press as Elizabeth Roxanne Cheesman Rajkovic, was called Federico García Cheesman and that he was living outside Peru. "I will guarantee him the affectionate relationship that a father should have with his son, I guarantee his education and everything that I can help him with."

Señor García, described as the Kennedy of Latin America when he won power for the first time in 1985, aged just 35, told TV Perú that he had the moral support of his wife, Señora Nores, with whom he has four grown up children, but commentators in Lima said that in making the announcement, the President was also seeking the forgiveness of the Peruvian people.

Señor Toledo, who governed from 2001 to 2006, saw his popularity drain steadily away in his second term when he refused to acknowledge a daughter that he fathered out of wedlock.

For ten years, Señor Toledo fought a series of paternity suits from Lucrecia Orozco Zapata, a woman with whom he admitted having an affair. In 2002, the scandal reached national proportions when a Supreme Court judge admitted visiting the President at home and trying to persuade him to publicly recognise his daughter.

Señor Toledo eventually admitted being the father of a 14-year old girl, Zarai Toledo Orozco, and reportedly paid Señora Zapata $100,000 to drop her demands for a DNA test.

"García did not want to run the same risk as the last government. There was pressure from the media and he did not want the issue to get politicized," said Manuel Saavedra, director of the Peruvian Market Research Company, after the President's announcement last night.

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