Santiago Times
Chile’s President To Request CIA’s Pinochet File
Written by Ignacio Gallegos
Following Monday’s official state visit by Barack Obama, Chilean President Sebastián Piñera may directly address the “open wounds” Chileans continue to suffer from unsolved human rights cases dating back to the dictatorship (1973-1990).
In an interview with The Associated Press - held briefly after Obama left the country to go to El Salvador, the last stop on his Latin America tour - President Piñera said he would formally request the declassification of CIA documents that could help identify agents responsible for over 1,200 cases of human rights violations.
“If there’s information that a friendly government such as the United States can provide to us, and that advances the speed and strength of the Chilean justice, of course we’re going to ask for it,” said Piñera. He added that his government is “clearly, categorically committed to contribute from its sphere of influence to the search for truth and that justice is done in all of these human rights cases.”
The role played by the United States in the 1973 coup that installed Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s 17-year dictatorship was one of the tougher points in Obama’s visit to Chile. Shortly before his arrival to the country, Cuba’s Fidel Castro demanded the U.S. leader explain and apologize for the former President Richard Nixon’s meddling before and after the dictatorship. When the question was posed in a press conference, Obama avoided an apology but suggested he would cooperate with information requests.
A similar request was presented by the deputies of the Concertación coalition, along with other moderate and left-wing parties and supported by an association of relatives of people who were arrested during the dictatorship, and are missing (AFDD). They demanded not only an apology from U. S. government, but also the public release of the classified documents.
The Chilean justice system was greatly aided by the release of thousands of CIA documents by President Bill Clinton in 2000, yet many were highly redacted and the number still classified remains unknown.
During his visit to Chile, Obama met with three of the four former Chilean presidents who served since democracy was restored in 1990. Former President Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle brought up the subject, as the death of his father—Eduardo Frei Montalva, and president of Chile prior to Allende’s election—remains unsolved (ST, March 23).
After the meeting, Frei Ruiz-Tagle noted that Obama “will collaborate to clarify all the human-rights violations,” a promise that he defined as “an important gesture.”
Piñera said that Obama’s will to help the clarification of human rights cases is coherent with his goal of a “new relationship” with Latin American countries.
“The United States used to set the rules of the road and sign the checks,” he told The Associated Press. “What President Obama proposed to us yesterday was something Chile has been assuming for a long time now — a different relationship, to move from handouts to collaboration, from an unequal vertical relationship to a relationship of equals, horizontal.”
In response to criticism by Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez that said Obama’s visit was short on results, Piñera stated that it was based on the false premise that the U. S. should give handouts to Latin America. “The language of the 21st century isn’t the language of the welfare states, but of collaboration among equals,” Piñera said. “Together we'll decide what to do to benefit both our countries.”
SOURCES: LA NACION, ASSOCIATED PRESS
By Ignacio Gallegos ( editor@santiagotimes.cl This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
http://www.santiagotimes.cl/news/human-rights/21042-chiles-president-to-request-cias-pinochet-file
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