In a statement issued late Wednesday, Montesino's lawyer Estela Valdivvia said her client had asked that Tenet testify "about his innocence" at his ongoing trial here.

The request was made during the third day of Montesinos trial on 70 charges of corruption during his tenure as intelligence chief under the former administration of president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), who is currently exiled in Japan.

Montesinos faces 20 years in prison if found guilty of helping send weapons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Latin America's largest insurgency.

Captured after Fujimori fled from Peru in disgrace, Montesinos has already been sentenced to nine years in jail for corruption and has already spent two years behind bars at a Navy prison in Callao.

His trial on arms smuggling charges, begun January 20, is expected to last several months.

Montesino's lawyer said the CIA got Montesinos to help smuggle 10,000 automatic rifles -- purchased in Jordan ostensibly for the Peruvian army -- to the FARC rebels in 1999.

The CIA's reason for the operation, Valdivvia said, was to stirr things up with the FARC to promote the US Plan Colombia giving more than one billion dollars in military and economic aid to Bogota to fight drug-trafficking.

Montesinos, who as Fujimori's right-hand man had incurred the wrath of the United States for his alleged underhanded operations, accepted the CIA's offer to get back on Washington's good side, the lawyer said.

The secret arms-smuggling operation was publicly disclosed by Montesinos in August 1999, but the Peruvian media soon reported that the spy chief was the real mastermind of the whole deal and that he had disclosed it only because he was about to be unmasked.

The US Embassy on Friday issued a statement denying the CIA or any other US government agency had been involved in arms or drug smuggling activities.

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