LIMA, September 4, 2008 (AFP) - The human rights trial of Peru's former president Alberto Fujimori could be suspended indefinitely due to mounting health complications, which include a potentially cancerous pancreatic tumor, officials said here.

A decision on how to proceed is due next week, when the presiding judge, Cesar San Martin, learns the results of medical examinations of the 70 year-old Fujimori.

'It is vital that the trial is not suspended more than eight days or ... more than 12 days, because this would mean the collapse of the process,' the case's prosecutor Jose Pelaez told the daily Peru21.

Such a break in the trial would mean a 'return to the drawing board' for the nearly 100 days of court proceedings that have taken place since the closely followed trial opened last December, lawyer Julio Rodriguez told RPP radio.

Pelaez stressed that the proceedings would come to an abrupt end if Fujimori's tumor proves to be malignant and he needs immediate medical intervention.

'We would be faced with a development that is completely outside of the process. If he is treated for an illness, there is absolutely nothing we can do because that depends on nature,' the prosecutor said.

Fujimori was scheduled to undergo a battery of tests Thursday at the Hospital de Enfermedades Neoplasicas to determine if the tumor is malignant or benign.

The trial was already suspended for a week in June, when doctors removed a cancerous lesion from Fujimori's tongue.

'We hope to rule out cancer, because this man should not have to confront a trial on one hand and a deterioration of health on the other,' said Fujimori's family doctor Alejandro Aguinaga, who is also the vice president of Congress.

The ex-president's daughter, Congresswoman Keiko Fujimori -- one of Peru's most popular politicians -- said her father 'wants to continue with the trial despite his health problems, and doesn't want them to interfere with the path of justice because he is innocent.'

The latest health twists have revived debate about the conditions under which Fujimori has been incarcerated, which his daughter and followers have described as severe.

Fujimori has been held at a police base in Lima since he was extradited from Chile to face trial in September 2007.

Keiko Fujimori has also complained about the grueling court schedule, in which her father is forced to appear three times per week.

Supporters have sought better conditions for Fujimori including a release from confinement for the length of the trial -- a bid denied by prosecutors on the grounds Fujimori is considered a threat to flee the country.

Fujimori governed Peru from 1990 to 2000, and is facing up to 30 years in prison on charges he ordered two massacres in the early 1990s that killed 25 people total.

Facing a corruption scandal, in 2000 Fujimori fled to Japan, the land of his parents, and resigned the presidency via fax.

He was granted Japanese citizenship and avoided several extradition requests, but then traveled to Chile in November 2005 where he was arrested and eventually extradited to stand trial.