Gen. Pinochet

Thank you for your advice to British Home Secretary Jack Straw to let justice continue in Augusto Pinochet’s extradition process to Spain. The families and friends of the “disappeared” and all those who grieved for the destruction of democracy by the extreme Chilean right wing must applaud your editorial speaking up in this matter (Oct. 11).

However, it is often easier to advise and to encourage the rectification of wrongdoing where others are concerned than it is to avoid coming to terms with our own. It is well known that Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger and the CIA collaborated with Pinochet, actively supported the coup d’etat and thus are to an extent responsible for the dictator’s years of murder and terror in Chile.

How about an editorial encouraging the current U.S. administration to apologize to the people of Chile--and to the people of the U.S.--for our heinous, complicit behavior in the murder of President Salvador Allende, the overthrow of the legally elected government of Chile and the unleashing of Pinochet’s death squads?

NEIL FLOWERS

Los Angeles

* Gen. Pinochet rescued Chile from communism and turned his country into the most prosperous and modern in the region. To accomplish this he had to deal harshly with the minions of Allende, many imported from Cuba, who were poised to assassinate the Chilean general staff just prior to the Pinochet takeover.

No matter, the left-leaning L.A. Times supports the former Chilean president’s illegal detention in England and possible deportation to Spain for a mock trial. Will this newspaper also urge the arrest of Fidel Castro, whose bloody crimes are well-documented, should he set foot on foreign soil?

ARTHUR HANSL

Santa Monica