U.S. Criticizes Chile for Poor Protection Provided to Kennedy

The State Department said today that Chile’s military government failed to give adequate protection for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy when he was met by hostile demonstrators with “close ties” to the Pinochet government.

Department spokesman Bernard Kalb said the U.S. government “expressed our concern” to the Chilean government about “the inadequate response by security forces” to the violence by about 400 rowdy demonstrators at the Santiago airport at the outset of Kennedy’s visit Wednesday.

Kennedy was not hurt, but his motorcade was pelted with rocks and tomatoes, several car windows were broken and a Chilean human rights activist was injured. The Massachusetts Democrat and his two sisters, who accompanied him on a Latin American tour, had to be flown from the airport in police helicopters.

Kalb said the U.S. Embassy in Santiago had advance word of the demonstrations and informed the Chilean government and Kennedy, but the government failed to provide adequate security for the senator’s arrival.

“Security measures taken at the airport were clearly inadequate,” Kalb told reporters. “Our understanding is that the protesters represented an organization with close ties to the Chilean government.”

Blocked for 2 Hours

Kennedy, a critic of the military government of President Augusto Pinochet, was blocked for two hours at the airport by pro-Pinochet demonstrators when he arrived for a 24-hour visit.

Kalb, reading a written statement to reporters about the incident, said Chilean security forces “did not clear the relatively small group of demonstrators from the roadway.”

“There are reports that police present on the scene failed to intervene to stop protesters assaulting cars leaving the area,” he said.

Kennedy, who left Santiago today after an otherwise uneventful visit, called the demonstrators a “rent-a-crowd.”

Kalb reiterated U.S. policy favoring “a peaceful return to democracy” in Chile, where Pinochet seized power in a 1973 coup in which popularly elected Marxist President Salvador Allende died.