By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

              LIMA, Peru (AP) -- Lori Berenson, the American on trial for alleged collaboration
              with leftist guerrillas in Peru, was questioned Tuesday about her work as secretary
              to a top El Salvadoran guerrilla leader.

              Berenson, 31, said she was personal assistant to Salvador Sanchez Ceren, a
              commander of El Salvador's former Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or
              FMLN.

              ``We are concluding that you were a person who was active in the military wing of
              the Farabundo Marti and probably in the political wing,'' said presiding magistrate
              Marcos Ibazeta.

              Berenson said she was involved solely in the peace talks that ended El Salvador's
              civil war in 1992. She pointed out that the ex-guerrilla is now a congressman, who
              goes by his real name, Leonel Gonzalez.

              ``I don't know where you are getting the idea that I worked in the military wing,'' she
              said. ``I did no work related to that.''

              In San Salvador last week, Gonzalez confirmed that Berenson was his personal
              secretary and told The Associated Press that Berenson ``never had any relationship
              with our military structures.''

              A secret Peruvian military court convicted Berenson of treason in 1996 and
              sentenced her to life in prison for allegedly helping Peru's Tupac Amaru
              Revolutionary Movement plan a thwarted takeover of Congress.

              But after years of pressure from the United States, Peru's highest military court
              overturned the conviction in August, leading to the new civilian trial that began last
              week on the lesser charges of ``terrorist collaboration.''

              Prosecutors allege she rented a house in 1995 as a hide-out for the Tupac Amaru
              rebels and collected information with the wife of the group's top commander for a
              planned attack on Congress.

              Berenson denies the charges and maintains she did not know her housemates were
              rebels.

              During Berenson's cross-examination Tuesday, Ibazeta asked the former
              Massachusetts Institute of Technology student about her decision to drop out of
              school in the late 1980s to devote herself to a U.S. movement that supported El
              Salvador's leftist rebels.

              She said she believed the Salvadoran guerrilla movement was ``legitimate in that
              there was no other way to change what for them was unjust.''

              Her lawyer, Jose Luis Sandoval, who has argued that Berenson was duped by the
              Tupac Amaru guerrillas, said Tuesday that the court was trying to convict her for her
              political ideals.

              ``Obviously, ideas, opinions and beliefs cannot stand as criminal evidence for a
              trial,'' he said after Tuesday's proceedings. ``Her opinions should not be evidence
              for this trial, but they're clearly trying to use them that way.''

              During opening testimony last week, Berenson accused authorities of manufacturing
              evidence, forcing witnesses to testify against her, and politically manipulating her
              case.