Chilean Foreign Minister Flies to General's Defense
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
SANTIAGO, Chile -- As protests to the continuing detention of Gen. Augusto Pinochet in London mounted here, the foreign minister flew to London Thursday in an 11th-hour bid to free the former dictator.
"I am not defending a dictator," Foreign Minister Jose Miguel Insulza Salinas told reporters before leaving Chile. "I am defending the country."
Insulza said he planned to meet with British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook on Friday morning, adding that he was aiming for "mutual understanding." But he said people "should not expect immediate results."
The official Chilean position, which was stated again in a legal petition delivered Thursday to British Home Secretary Jack Straw, is that, as a former head of state, Pinochet is immune to prosecution and extradition to Spain. On his arrest in London in October, the note contends, the general was carrying a diplomatic passport that grants him immunity.
Government officials privately say that Insulza, a Socialist party leader, will appeal to Labor and Socialist leaders in London and Madrid, arguing that a prolonged detention of the former dictator will jeopardize Chile's stability and transition to democracy. He is also expected to make a personal appeal on behalf of the general, telling British and Spanish officials that, at age 83, Pinochet is ailing and may not survive a lengthy extradition and trial.
Leaders of the country's two conservative parties have called on President Eduardo Frei to make an all-out diplomatic effort to free Pinochet by forming a delegation that includes members of the opposition and jurists with expertise in international law. They have expressed concerns that the Socialist Party, which governs with Frei's Christian Democrats, does not really want Pinochet to return to Chile.
Members of the military's high command have come out in support of Frei's initiatives in an apparent effort to cool the passions of right-wing supporters of Pinochet, who have taken to the streets.
A small band of Pinochet supporters Thursday burned a British flag on a bridge in central Santiago, and there were several anonymous bomb threats that proved to be hoaxes. The rumblings followed a night of protests by right-wing and left-wing activists in Santiago as well as in the provincial city of Concepcion.
Police broke up demonstrations with tear gas and a water cannon, but not before some Pinochet supporters threw rocks and eggs at the British and Spanish embassies. Police arrested 120 people, and 10 officers were slightly injured.
Six of the police officers were injured by projectiles thrown at them by leftist students in front of the University of Concepcion, a center of revolutionary ferment since the 1960s.
Police blocked traffic and reinforced security around the embassies and ambassadorial residences of Spain and Britain, as well as those of Sweden, Switzerland and Belgium. Those three countries joined Spain in petitioning Britain for Pinochet's extradition on human rights charges.
The leading presidential candidate in next year's election, Ricardo Lagos of the Socialist Party, came a step closer to supporting the government's position favoring Pinochet's return in an interview published Thursday in Chile from Mexico City. Previously Lagos had said he would stay out of a judicial matter; but now he says he favors Pinochet's return so he may be tried in Chile.
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)