POLITICS : Chile Feeling Heat Over Shifts in Eastern Europe

Fallout from political turmoil in Eastern Europe is causing headaches and nervous tension in Chile.

The troubles started in early December after Hungarian authorities discovered an illegal air shipment of Chilean arms. The 11 tons of weapons were en route to Croatian fighters, in violation of a United Nations embargo on civil war-torn Yugoslavia.

On Dec. 11, former President Erich Honecker of East Germany took refuge in the Chilean Embassy in Moscow. There he remains, a very hot potato for the Santiago government.

Critics of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, the former dictator who still commands the Chilean army, have seized on the “arms case” to decry the army’s resistance to civilian control. The army issued an inconclusive report that blames no high officers for the smuggling, and a civilian judge has begun a criminal investigation.

The Chilean press reported that the Factories and Metalworks of the Army (FAMAE) processed falsified documents for the arms shipment. Gen. Guillermo Letelier, a Pinochet protege and manager of FAMAE, was transferred but was not charged in the smuggling.

So far, only one person, a civilian employee of the army’s logistics department, is under arrest.

If any officers are charged, their trial may be transferred to the military justice system. Leftist Congressman Jorge Schaulsohn and others have called for a special congressional investigation if the case is transferred.

“With military justice, the country will never find out anything,” Schaulsohn told reporters this week.

Earlier, Pinochet and other army generals issued a statement that accused Schaulsohn of anti-army conduct and declared the proposed congressional probe “inappropriate.” Government ministers and other politicians criticized the generals for the statement, and Pinochet responded defiantly: “Every time they attack us, we are going to answer.”

At its hottest moments, the military-civilian dispute raised fears of an “institutional crisis”--an impasse that could jeopardize the democracy. The dispute has cooled, but it may not be over.

Analysts say that unless high officials responsible for the arms shipment are punished, the government must take the blame. So the government faces a potential dilemma: to prosecute senior army officers, at the risk of triggering an institutional crisis, or to accommodate the army, at the risk of losing government credibility.

In the Honecker case, the government also faces unpleasant choices.

If it grants the former Communist leader’s request for political asylum, Chile would defy one of the most powerful governments on Earth. Germany wants Honecker to answer in court for actions by his government, including the shooting of East Germans who tried to escape over the Berlin Wall.

Germany is a major source of foreign investment and trade for Chile. Chilean President Patricio Aylwin, a Christian Democrat, undoubtedly feels the pressure.

But he also is under strong domestic pressure to bring Honecker to Chile, or at least make sure the Germans don’t get him.

Honecker’s government was a generous host to thousands of Chilean Socialists who fled into exile after this country’s 1973 military coup.

Honecker, 79, has a daughter in Chile, married to a former exile. The former East German president reportedly has cancer.