BY DREW BENSON
  Associated Press

  LIMA - When Belgian-born Eliane Karp became Peru's first lady last year, she promised to shake up the capital's elite and eschew the socialite duties customary to presidential wives.

  A year later, the sharp-tongued anthropologist has a testy relationship with Lima's conservative society and a political scene characterized by bickering and personal attacks.

  Karp, now visiting the United States with her husband, President Alejandro Toledo, has been dogged by criticisms that she is thin-skinned and that she lied about a
  lucrative bank consultant job.

  Last week, she accused opponents of trying to torpedo a constitutional reform project sponsored by Toledo's party. She said they might even be promoting a coup
  against Toledo, who took office in July 2001 as the first democratically elected Indian president.

  'To the medieval spirits who have risen up and tell the first lady, `Why don't you stay in the palace and drink tea and stop causing trouble?' I say I have never taken
  tea, much less in the palace,'' she said.

  For some, the flak smacks of sexism.

  ''When women are fighters, they are criticized more,'' said legislator Anel Townsend, noting that she herself faced resistance during an unsuccessful bid for the
  congressional presidency this year. ``Women should have the same rights as men to debate ideas.''

  Karp, 47, who first came to Peru in the late 1970s to study Indian communities while working on a doctorate at Stanford University, accompanied Toledo into office with ambitious plans to address social inequality and the needs of Peru's poor.

  She wowed the marginalized Indian and mixed-race majority during her husband's campaign.

  While many Peruvians related to Toledo's facial features and childhood poverty, it was Karp's ability to speak the Indian language of Quechua that drew cheers at rallies.

  After Toledo took office, Karp maintained a low profile, heading an unpaid government commission on Indian and African-Peruvian affairs and applying for Peruvian citizenship.

  She also quietly expanded her ''first lady office'' from a personal secretary to a staff of 20.

  She was thrust into the spotlight in August when it was revealed that she was earning $10,000 a month as an agricultural projects consultant to Peru's second-largest bank.

  News media raised questions about Karp's honesty by resurrecting interviews in which she said for the first time in her marriage she did not have her own income.