Documents claim Kissinger backed ‘dirty war’

A CONVERSATION between former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Argentina’s foreign minister gave the military junta the impression it had American backing for its notorious “dirty war”, it has been claimed.

Near the outset of Argentina’s ruthless campaign against dissidents in 1976, Kissinger told the junta’s foreign minister: “If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly,” according to a newly-declassified document released yesterday.

The conversation left Argentine generals with the belief that Kissinger gave them “a carte blanche for the dirty war”, said Carlos Osorio of the National Security Archives.

But a former US State Department official who attended Kissinger’s meeting in June 1976 with Argentina’s foreign minister, Admiral Cesar Augusto Guzzetti, hit back, saying that view was “a distortion of history.”

“It’s a canard,” said William Rogers, vice chairman of Kissinger’s lobbying firm, Kissinger Associates. “The idea that he would tell another country to violate human rights quickly or slowly or under any circumstances is preposterous.”

Kissinger’s office did not comment. He has denied condoning abuses.

The documents revive the debate about Kissinger’s relationship with military dictators in Latin America in the Nixon and Ford administrations.

Argentina’s military rulers seized power in March 1976, beginning six years of rule in which they kidnapped, tortured and killed dissidents. The government says 8,900 people disappeared but human rights groups say its 30,000.