Date: Thu, 14 Sep 1995 06:39:00 -0700 (PDT) From: Margarita & Mike Lacabe To: Amnesty International Members List Subject: Forget the past, Pinochet tells Chileans (fwd) Reply-To: aimembers-l@blob.best.net Status: RO SANTIAGO (ForgetfulRUs) - Former dictator General Augusto Pinochet, comparing Chileans to a quarrelsome couple, said Wednesday they should forget ill feelings caused by his 17-year-long rule. Pinochet, now commander in chief of the army under a civilian government, said Chileans should stop pressing forward with investigations of human rights abuses committed under military rule and instead learn to forget them. ``The only thing left, my friends, is to forget,'' Pinochet told businessmen at an exclusive Santiago club. ``And you forget not by reopening a court case, by throwing someone in jail. No, forget. That is the word, and to reach that, both sides have to forget,'' said Pinochet, who took power in a bloody 1973 coup. ``When a married couple has a quarrel, you don't have the husband or the wife criticizing the other one every day. You just be quiet and forget,'' he said. It was the closest Pinochet has come to recognizing anything negative about his rule, during which Chileans endured often brutal repression. But he fell far short of the ``mea culpa'' issued by Argentina's former military rulers this year. Referring to his critics, Pinochet said: ``You have to answer these people, you have to make these people see that they are wrong. If they want reconciliation, don't corner us, because we are just as free as they are to respond and look for friends.'' Pinochet, looking alert and lucid at 79, has sounded angry in public lately as President Eduardo Frei seeks to rewrite Chile's constitution to reduce the military's prominent role in politics. Two days ago Pinochet referred to his enemies as ''murderers'' and accused unnamed Congress members of supporting a 1986 assassination attempt against him.