MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chile 1973: “nothing to be proud of”.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted during a television interview in Washington that the overthrow of elected Chilean president Salvador Allende in 1973 “is a part of the United States history of which we are not proud”.

The live program was actually about Iraq but led to the Chilean case when Mr. Powell was asked if the US had not learned about the consequences of interfering in other countries as happened with the military coup headed by General Augusto Pinochet that had the full support of the CIA.

Mr. Powell rejected comparing Chile 1973 and the current Iraq situation underlining that US attitude had changed radically.

"What happened with Mr. Allende is not a part of the United States history of which we are proud. Now we have a more responsible way of dealing with these situations".

Mr. Powell said successive US administrations have been working hard to help Chile establish a formal democracy and recalled that towards the end of the eighties when Chile recovered democracy, "I talked with the generals of the need to overcome the dictatorship".

"It was one of the proudest moments of my life when I visited Chile and talked to the officers of the Armed Forces about democracy and the need to have freely elected governments", emphasized Mr. Powell, adding #that submission to civilian rule is vital in a democracy so that situations such as that in 1973 don't ever occur again".

In November 2000 the Clinton administration declassified documents that officially confirm US responsibility in the Chilean 1973 bloody coup as well as knowledge of a coordinated effort by the then military dictatorships to repress all opponents and dissidents beyond national frontiers that eventually killed thousands.

Some of the 16,000 documents including 1,500 CIA reports give ample evidence of US involvement, with then Security Advisor Henry Kissinger talking about a "clandestine action plan" in Chile, and former president Richard Nixon, following Mr. Allende's election in 1970, saying he favoured a plan "to ruin the Chilean economy" and force a change in the Marxist oriented government.