CIA releases documents on Chile operations

The United States has released more than sixteen-thousand documents relating to the period of military rule in Chile under General Augusto Pinochet.

Among them are papers from the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA, detailing its covert operations in the country.

The BBC correspondent in Santiago says the most important document shows that General Pinochet requested false passports from Paraguay for Chilean agents travelling to the US.

Our correspondent says that some believe the document could be used to link the General to the assassination in 1976 in Washington of a former Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier.

Another paper confirms that the US funded attempts to undermine the democratically-elected Marxist president, Salvador Allende, who was overthrown in a bloody coup in 1973. A researcher at the National Security Archive in Washington, which campaigns for open government, Peter Kornbluh, told the BBC he thought the documents would re-write America's role in Chile.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service