Chile Military Regime Begins 13th Year in Confrontational Mood

President Augusto Pinochet is leading the Chilean military regime into its 13th year in what appears to be a mood of confrontation. Pinochet has rejected any negotiation with the democratic opposition. He has brusquely ordered the archbishop of Santaigo to stop meddling in politics.

“By June, we will all be in jail, the way things are going now,” Gabriel Valdez, leader of the opposition Christian Democratic Party, said the other day.

Juan Somavia, a political scientist who has been active in organizing an opposition front, said, “This is going to be a year of mobilization of resistance, not negotiation.”

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) got a taste of Pinochet’s mood when he visited here in January. Demonstrators organized by the political department of the National Intelligence Service tried to disrupt the visit and besieged Kennedy as he arrived at the airport, forcing him to enter the city by helicopter.

Despite the demonstration, which produced an official U.S. protest, Kennedy met with a broad range of opposition political leaders and businessmen, including some who until recently were supporters of Pinochet.

Aim of Kennedy’s Visit

The purpose of Kennedy’s visit was to urge that the multiparty opposition unite for peaceful resistance to Pinochet and for laying the basis for a future civilian government. Pinochet and his ministers refused to talk with Kennedy.

Pinochet’s refusal to deal with his critics was spelled out in a Christmas Eve interview with Archbishop Francisco Fresno of Santiago. In a 17-minute tirade, Pinochet told Fresno to “stay out of politics” and to confine church activities to spiritual affairs. According to aides, Fresno was taken by surprise and stunned by the violence of Pinochet’s language.

Fresno, the Roman Catholic primate of Chile, sponsored a proposal last year, called the National Accord, that was drafted by representatives of Chile’s major non-Marxist political parties, professional societies, business associations and labor unions. It set forth the principles of a modern democratic government, including guarantees for private property and social programs for the poor.

To reach elections for a new government, the accord called for suspension of the decrees that allow Pinochet to rule by fiat, with no elected congress and a judicial system that refuses to investigate or punish abuses of human rights by the security forces.

The Supreme Court recently threw out a ruling by an investigating magistrate that seven officers of the National Police be tried for the deaths of three schoolteachers who were Communist Party members. The victims were found in March with their throats cut in a field near the international airport. Witnesses appeared who said they saw them being arrested.

Case Thrown Out

The Supreme Court justices who threw out the investigation were the same justices who several years ago refused to extradite three Chilean military officers indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury for the bombing deaths of Orlando Letelier, a Chilean opposition figure, and Ronnie Moffitt, an American who worked with Letelier in Washington.

Michael V. Townley, an American agent of Chilean military intelligence, confessed to placing the bomb that killed Letelier and identified the three Chilean military men as having set up the assassination. Townley is serving a reduced sentence in a U.S. federal prison under a plea bargain.

According to a report on human rights given to Kennedy by the legal aid office of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Santiago, “one of the factors in the critical human rights situation here is that the emergency powers of the authorities are beyond any control of review process by the courts, which facilitates abuses.”

Last year, the legal aid office received reports of 5,401 arrests under emergency decrees, up nearly 2,000 from 1984. It also received allegations of 564 cases of torture and illegal coercion of prisoners.

The Reagan Administration has publicly declared its support for restoration of democratic government here through negotiations. Under a new ambassador, Harry G. Barnes Jr., a career diplomat who came here from India in November, more emphasis is being placed on encouraging contacts with the opposition.

500 at Reception

During Kennedy’s one-day visit, Barnes gave a reception at the embassy residence attended by more than 500 Chilean political, trade union, business, cultural, media and student leaders identified with the non-Marxist opposition to the military regime.

Many opposition figures are being invited to visit the United States.

Earlier, the U.S. position on the Chilean opposition was that it did not offer effective prospects for replacing the Pinochet regime. Now, the so-called Democratic Alliance of Christian Democrats, Radicals, Social Democrats and non-Marxist Socialists is seen as a force to be cultivated as a possible alternative. Other political groups, such as the center-right National Party, are also potential members of a movement to end the authoritarian system, although they oppose open confrontation with Pinochet.

For the Reagan Administration, Chile poses problems that are similar to those that faced President Jimmy Carter in Nicaragua in 1978. The United States tried then to replace the right-wing Somoza regime by a moderate opposition movement that offered hopes of a constitutional, democratic government.

But the United States failed to take effective action to persuade Anastasio Somoza, the Nicaraguan dictator, to step aside in time, and the armed insurgency spearheaded by the Marxist-led Sandinista National Liberation Front defeated Somoza’s National Guard and installed a Cuban-sponsored, Soviet-backed regime.

Small-Scale Sabotage

There is no similar armed insurgency in Chile, but the outlawed Communist Party of Chile and the more radical Revolutionary Left Movement maintain armed groups that undertake small-scale sabotage, such as destruction of electric power lines, bank robberies and occasional attacks on security forces.

These attacks are pinpricks for the well-organized Chilean military and police. Moreover, the Communist-led armed movements serve Pinochet’s goal of maintaining Chile under permanent martial law. Pinochet, a 70-year-old army general, pictures Chile as one of the main targets of Soviet hostility.

In civilian sectors there is a growing erosion of support for Pinochet, even among the middle-class groups that welcomed the military’s overthrow in 1973 of the Marxist-led regime of President Salvador Allende.

All recent elections in professional associations--teachers, doctors, engineers and lawyers--and student government elections in the major universities have produced overwhelming victories for candidates identified with the National Accord.

According to Chilean opposition leaders, the universities could become the center for resistance to the regime this year. Radical left-wing elements among Chile’s 150,000 university students are preparing a campaign for removal of university rectors appointed by Pinochet. But the universities are only one of the possible conflict sectors.

Limping Economy

The Chilean economy continues to limp, with growth rates projected this year at 2%, after a long decline since 1982. Chile is able to pay the interest on its $20-billion foreign debt only because creditor bankers continue to lend Chile money as an example of economic orthodoxy. A $760-million loan received in December will pay part of this year’s interest, but there is little new money for investment.

This offers dim prospects for the future. Inflation of more than 20% continues, and wages lag behind prices. Repressed demands by unions for wage increases are an explosive issue. Chile’s biggest labor union, the National Copperworkers Federation, recently defied a directive by the Labor Ministry and elected Rodolfo Sequel, who has been an opposition leader, to another term as president.

Pinochet can probably keep down the opposition as long as he he retains the support of the army high command and the leaders of the navy, air force and national police who make up the military junta. But there are signs of dissent in the command of the air force and navy.

Gen. Fernando Matthei, the air force commander, has said that the proposed National Accord should have been accepted as a basis for negotiations. Adm. Jose Toribio Merino has said that political parties should be legalized before an attempt is made to restore the electoral registries, which were burned by the Pinochet regime in 1974.

This is not rebellion, but it does show that there is resistance, in addition to that of the political opposition, to Pinochet’s desire to continue in power beyond the end of his present term in 1989.

Pinochet has shown that he will resist any reduction of his authority as long as possible. It is an endurance contest in which the Reagan Administration has apparently begun to bet on the opposition.