PARIS (Reuters) - The U.S. Embassy has told a French judge probing the 1970s disappearance of French nationals in Chile that it does not want him to question former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, a judicial source said Tuesday.
Judge Roger Le Loire has asked Kissinger to testify on the alleged part played by the United States in the murder of opposition figures in Chile during the rightist rule of General Augusto Pinochet, who took power in a 1973 coup.
A summons was delivered to Kissinger Monday while he was paying a private visit to France. However, the former U.S. foreign policy chief has since traveled to Italy without seeing Le Loire, leaving it to the U.S. embassy in Paris to explain his position.
The embassy told Le Loire in a letter that Kissinger had other obligations and that the information requested by the judge was confidential, a French judicial source told Reuters.
The letter, signed by an embassy official, suggested Le Loire should address an official request for information to the Republican President Bush's administration.
The French justice source said a request had been sent to Washington in 1999 during the Democratic administration of President Bill Clinton, but no answer had been received.
The source added that Le Loire had a State Department document dated August 23, 1976, that suggested the U.S. administration knew about ``Condor,'' a plan agreed by Chile and other South American regimes to assassinate opposition figures.
Kissinger became national security adviser under President Richard Nixon in 1969 and was secretary of state from 1973 to 1977 under presidents Nixon and Gerald Ford, both Republicans.
One of the French nationals who went missing, leftist activist Jean-Yves Claudet-Fernandez, was a victim of the ''Condor'' plan, according to Le Loire's investigation.
The judge also holds Pinochet responsible for the disappearance of activist Alphonse Chanfreau, priest Etienne Pesle and Georges Klein, a former adviser to Salvador Allende, the Socialist president of Chile who died in the 1973 coup.
Le Loire issued an arrest warrant against Pinochet in 1998.
Pinochet is facing trial in Chile on charges of covering up kidnappings and killings during his 1973-90 military rule.