(C) Common Dreams
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As Door Opens for Legal Actions in Chilean Coup, Kissinger Is Numbered Among the Hunted [1]
['Larry Rohter']
Date: 2002-03-28
''My father was neither for or against Allende, but a constitutionalist who believed that the winner of the election should take office,'' René Schneider Jr. said. ''That made him an obstacle to Mr. Kissinger and the Nixon government, and so they conspired with generals here to carry out the attack on my father and to plot a coup attempt.''
In another action, human rights lawyers here have filed a criminal complaint against Mr. Kissinger and other American officials, accusing them of helping organize the covert regional program of political repression called Operation Condor. As part of that plan, right-wing military dictatorships in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay coordinated efforts throughout the 1970's to kidnap and kill hundreds of their exiled political opponents.
Argentina has also begun an investigation into American support for and involvement in Operation Condor. A judge there, Rodolfo Cancioba Corral, has said he regards Mr. Kissinger as a potential ''defendant or suspect.'' But lawyers say it is virtually impossible for a foreign court to compel former American officials to answer a summons.
During a visit by Mr. Kissinger to France last year, for instance, a judge there sent police officers to his Paris hotel to serve him with a request to answer questions about American involvement in the Chilean coup, in which French citizens also disappeared. But Mr. Kissinger refused to respond to the subpoena, referred the matter to the State Department, and flew on to Italy.
''I think it is clear that Kissinger is now one of many, many officials who have to think twice before they travel,'' said Bruce Broomhall, director of the international justice program at the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. ''It will be surprising to many that an American secretary of state is among that group, but times have certainly changed'' as a result of the Pinochet case, he said.
The uproar appears to have forced Mr. Kissinger to cancel a trip to Brazil. He was scheduled to make a speech and receive a government medal in São Paulo on March 13, but withdrew after leftist groups there said they would demonstrate against him and also called on judges and prosecutors to detain him for questioning about Operation Condor.
A spokeswoman for Kissinger Associates in New York attributed the change of plans to a ''scheduling conflict.'' But the organizer of the event, Rabbi Henry Sobel of the Congregacão Israelita Paulista, said ''the situation had become politically uncomfortable'' both for Mr. Kissinger and local Jewish community leaders who had invited him.
''I spoke with him many times on the telephone and made it very clear to him what was happening behind the scenes, and he was very sensitive to that,'' Rabbi Sobel said in a telephone interview. ''This was a way to avoid any problems or embarrassment for him and for us.''
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/28/world/door-opens-for-legal-actions-chilean-coup-kissinger-numbered-among-hunted.html
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