[News] Kissinger backed Argentina's Dirty War

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KISSINGER BACKED DIRTY WAR AGAINST LEFT IN ARGENTINA
Transcripts show former secretary of state urged violent crackdown on
opposition
____________________________________________________________________

THE GUARDIAN
International News
Saturday August 28, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/argentina/story/0,11439,1292648,00.html
Julian Borger in Washington and Uki Goni in Buenos Aires

Henry Kissinger gave Argentina's military junta the green light to suppress
political opposition at the start of the "dirty war" in 1976, telling the
country's foreign minister: "If there are things that have to be done, you
should do them quickly," according to newly-declassified documents
published yesterday. State department documents show the former secretary
of state urged Argentina to crush the opposition just months after it
seized power and before the US Congress convened to consider sanctions.

"We won't cause you unnecessary difficulties. If you can finish before
Congress gets back, the better," Mr Kissinger told Admiral Cesar Augusto
Guzzetti, the foreign minister, according to the State Department's
transcript.

Carlos Osorio, an analyst at the National Security Archive, a US pressure
group which published the transcript, said it was likely to be seen by
historians as "a smoking gun".

It is likely to be seized on by Mr Kissinger's critics who have been
calling for him to face charges for abetting war crimes and human rights
abuses in Cambodia, Chile and Argentina.

The Argentine junta formed a secret pact in 1976 known as the Condor Plan
with other South American dictatorships in Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia,
Uruguay and Brazil for the eradication of "terrorists". According to
official figures, nearly 9,000 people disappeared in Argentina alone but
human rights organisations put the figure nearer to 30,000.

"The newly-revealed documents prove that as early as June 1976 Kissinger
was informed of the existence of the Condor Plan," said Horacio Verbitsky,
head of the Argentine human rights group Cels in Buenos Aires.

Mr Verbitsky, who during the 1970s ran an underground news service, said Mr
Kissinger made it difficult for the US embassy in Buenos Aires to pressure
Argentina's generals on human rights violations. "When US ambassador Robert
Hill met with the generals to demand an end to the violence, the generals
could say, your boss Kissinger knows what's happening and he doesn't care,"
he said.

The documents include a state department transcript of a conversation
between Mr Kissinger, then secretary of state in the Ford administration
and Mr Guzzetti, on October 7 1976, six months after the Argentine military
had seized power.

By that time the regime's brutality had become clear. Mr Hill sent repeated
notes to Washington, describing the abuses and his attempts to get the
junta led by President Jorge Videla to stop the "disappearances" of its
leftwing opponents.

But when Mr Guzzetti raised the issue at the October 1976 meeting at the
Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York, Mr Kissinger told him: "Look, our basic
attitude is that we would like you to succeed. I have an old-fashioned view
that friends ought to be supported. What is not understood in the United
States is that you have a civil war. We read about human rights problems
but not the context. The quicker you succeed the better.

"If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly. But
you must get back quickly to normal procedures."

Mr Kissinger remains an influential voice on foreign affairs in Washington.
His office at his lobbying firm, Kissinger Associates, did not return calls
seeking comment yesterday.

William Rogers, a former state department official who attended the
Guzzetti meeting and is now vice-chairman of Kissinger Associates told the
Associated Press: "It's a canard ... The idea that he would tell another
country to violate human rights quickly or slowly or under any
circumstances is preposterous."

The National Security Archive, which campaigns for government transparency
and pursues the publication of classified documents, had received the
transcript of the Guzzetti meeting in February, in response to a request
under the Freedom of Information Act. However, the key passages in the
conversation had been blacked out. The organisation appealed and the
deleted sections were reinstated.

According to another state department document, Mr Hill said the Argentine
generals had returned from their meeting "euphoric".

In a memo from a top Kissinger aide at the state department, Mr Hill was
assured that Mr Guzzetti had "heard only what he wanted to hear", and that
he had in fact been told "the USG [US government] regards most seriously
Argentina's international commitments to protect and promote fundamental
human rights.."

Mr Hill later found he had been lied to, and confided his disgust to
Patricia Derian, a former assistant secretary of state for human rights who
visited him in Buenos Aires in 1977.

"He said Kissinger had admitted to him exactly what has now come out in the
documents," Ms Derian told the Guardian

"... Kissinger has not been held to account for it. He's only been
embarrassed. He has people talk for him and say he's misunderstood ... It's
baloney," she said.

Copyright © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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