Chile arrests officers

Press, 2 May 1981, Page 8

Chile arrests officers

NZPA Buenos Aires The frontier separating Argentina and Chile remained partly closed and tense yesterday though there appeared to be little likelihood of war. Argentine troops were moved up to the border all day on Thursday, and the military junta yesterday sent a protest Note to Chile accusing it of a “high degree of provocation” for arresting two Argentine Army officers for alleged spying, the incident that sparked the crisis. “This is an insolent action,” the Note said, adding that “it does not contribute” to the continuing mediation effort by Pope John Paul II to settle a boundary dispute between the two countries in the Beagle Channel, near the southern tip of South America. Argentina and Chile have a history of threats and coun-ter-threats, and’there is no evidence in either country of

the mass mobilisation that preceded their nearest brush with war in December, 1978. The Beagle Channel claims were at issue then too. Travellers on the Chilean side of the border have also reported seeing some troop movements, but there was no official confirmation. It was unclear yesterday whether the Argentine Army closed the border and began moving its forces up on its own or whether the action was approved by the junta. A communique issued after an emergency meeting of the junta said that the junta was particularly angry that Chile did not notify Argentina of the arrests, which occurred on Saturday, until Tuesday night. ' The two Army officers, a major and a first lieutenant, were arrested with their wives in the Chilean town of Los Andes, B.okm north-east of Santiago and 40km from the Argentine border. The wives were released vester-

day, Chilean officials said. Chilean diplomats said that the two were arrested with a camera and photographs of Chilean bridges and fortifications. The two officers are the latest of several Argentines and Chileans who have been jailed as spies in the last year in both countries. Argentina, the more powerful of the two countries, has also been the more heated. Perhaps this is because it feels it was the loser both in an earlier arbitration of the Beagle Channel dispute by the Queen, which it rejected in 1978, and in a proposed papal solution, which it rejected in January. “Chile will know, how far it can stretch the rope,” General Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri, commander in chief of the Army, said two months ago. “No-one wants war but the Army and the country know how to respond to the eventuality of an armed conflict.”