Inter Press Service - January 6, 2003, Monday

 

CHILE:

PRESIDENT PRAISES ARMY CHIEF FOR CONDEMNING PINOCHET

 

By Gustavo González

 

SANTIAGO, Jan. 6

 

Chilean President Ricardo Lagos praised army chief Gen. Juan Emilio Cheyre Monday for condemning the human rights violations committed by the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) and saying that the army is not the "heir" to that regime.

 

Cheyre's remarks, which were published in the Sunday edition of the newspaper La Tercera, are "a good omen for starting out the year 2003," Lagos said in a joint news briefing which he offered with Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson, who is on a visit.

 

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 1973 coup d'etat staged by Pinochet with the assistance of the CIA, and Cheyre expressed his "innermost desire" that the date will not bring the customary "confrontations or animosity between sectors of Chilean society."

 

Cheyre's message is "very powerful," because it recognizes "elements of our past that we want to overcome," and the professional role that the army should play, said Lagos. The army "is an institution that belongs to all Chileans, and to the fatherland as a whole," added the president.

 

Cheyre was designated by Lagos, and in March 2002 succeeded Gen. Ricardo Izurieta, who in March 1998 had become the successor to Pinochet.

 

Pinochet, who was named army chief by the late president Salvador Allende on Aug. 23, 1973, overthrew the elected socialist president 20 days later and remained at the head of the army and state for nearly 25 years with strong U.S. support. Allende died in the coup, and thousands were "disappeared" and presumed murdered during his regime.

 

Cheyre's remarks were given a positive reception by prominent members of the governing centre-left coalition and the right-wing opposition parties, while triggering signs of discontent from people close to the former dictator.

 

Pinochet read the article but chose not to make any public comments, said retired general and former vice commander of the army Guillermo Gar n, considered one of the former de facto president's closest friends.

 

Another of Pinochet's close associates, retired general Julio Canessa, the designated senator who represents the army, described Cheyre's statement that the army "is not the heir of any past events, political party or social sector" as "delicate."

 

According to Canessa, Cheyre "never meant to put it that way, because while the army cannot be the heir of a government, it also cannot completely detach itself from history or from events that some criticise and others applaud."

 

Cheyre's statements are "historic" and constitute "an act of maturity by the army, in the sense that it is assuming the painful events of the past with the vision of a unified country, and that the armed forces are being projected above and beyond specific junctures of history or people," said the vice president of the Senate, Carlos Cantero, a member of the rightist National Renovation Party.

 

In his article, the army chief praised the report released in June 2000 by a civic-military panel, in which the armed forces "explicitly recognized the excesses committed against Chilean citizens" and stated that "there was no justification for the human rights violations."

 

Presidential spokesman Heraldo Muñoz said Cheyre's article "reflects a professional army, with a vision of the future and of all Chileans," and criticised the rightists who collaborated with the dictatorship and who have not yet made "strong gestures of repentance."

 

Gladys Mar n, the president of the Communist Party, said Cheyre's words were encouraging, but invited him to accompany his statements with "information on the fate of the detained- disappeared."

 

The civic-military panel that completed its work in June 2000 agreed on a procedure for receiving anonymous information on the whereabouts of the remains of the 1,200 victims of forced disappearance at the hands of the Pinochet regime, but many of the leads provided by members of the military turned out to be false.

 

Santiago Mayor Joaqu n Lav n, the most prominent member of the right-wing Independent Democratic Union party, lauded Cheyre's remarks, which according to him showed that "the army recognizes what happened in the past, and reflected its aim for a future in which it is united with all Chileans."

 

"The only heir to the military government is the country itself," said General Garín, who claimed that the dictatorship "modernized Chile and furnished it with the tools to become what we are today" -- an economy that is taken as a model by other developing countries.