- WASHINGTON - While Argentina's
military junta was suppressing dissidents in 1976, US Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger told the country's foreign minister "If there are
things that have to be done, you should do them quickly," according
to a newly declassified document.
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- The conversation left Argentine generals with the belief
that Kissinger gave them "a carte blanche for the dirty war,"
National Security Archives spokesman Carlos Osorio said.
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- The foreign policy research centre obtained the documents
that were released on Friday. But a former State Department official who
attended Kissinger's meeting in June 1976 with Argentinian foreign minister
Admiral Cesar Augusto Guzzetti said that view was "a distortion of
history". "It's a canard," said William Rogers, vice chair
of Kissinger's lobbying firm, Kissinger Associates. "The idea that
he would tell another country to violate human rights quickly or slowly
or under any circumstances is preposterous."
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- Kissinger's office did not respond to a request for comment.
He has denied condoning abuses.
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- The documents revive the debate about Kissinger's relationship
with military dictators in Latin America when he was secretary of state
in the Nixon and Ford administrations.
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- It was an era when military officers frequently toppled
elected governments and brutalised dissidents, but were accepted by US
leaders as anti-communist allies. Argentina's military rulers seized power
in March 1976, beginning six years of rule in which they kidnapped, tortured
and killed dissidents.
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- The government says 8,900 people disappeared over that
period; human rights groups put the figure around 30,000.
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- http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/28/1
093518164960.html?oneclick=true#
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