The British Home Secretary, Jack Straw, is facing further pressure to make public the medical report on which he based his intention to release the former military ruler of Chile, Augusto Pinochet.

In a letter published in the Times newspaper in London, the chairman of the ethics committee of the British Medical Association Michael Wilks has argued that medical ethics posed no barrier to the conclusions of the report being examined in court.

Mr Straw is currently considering final arguments against his intention to release the general.

But he's refused calls from human rights groups and the Spanish judge who's seeking the general's extradition for the medical report to be made public so they can argue against it's conclusions. The eighty-four-year-old general has been under house arrest in Britain for the past fifteen months.

He's said to be suffering from a series of ailments

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service