Chile Says Chavez Wrong About Police Chief Probe

Chavez warned on Thursday he was reviewing ties and trade with Colombia in the wake of the Interpol report.

Chile defended one of its top police officials on Friday after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez charged he was being probed for dictatorship-era abuses, saying the leftist leader was "badly informed" and wrong.

Chavez said late that Thursday Arturo Herrera, head of Chile's investigative police branch and acting president of international police agency Interpol, was being probed over abuses committed during Augusto Pinochet's 1973-1990 dictatorship.

Chavez was reacting to an Interpol report issued on Thursday that authenticated documents Colombia says prove Venezuela's leftist leader has supported FARC guerrillas.

"We think President Chavez has been badly informed about what he has publicly stated," Deputy Interior Minister Felipe Harboe told reporters at Chile's presidential palace. "The government of Chile absolutely endorses the director general of Chile's investigative police unit."

"The information given to President Chavez lacks veracity," he added. "There is no such accusation of any kind against our director general of the investigative police unit, and it is important to make that clear."

Herrera is Interpol's senior vice president, and took up the mantle of the organization's presidency pending its general assembly due in October.

The charge by Chavez comes as both he and Chilean President Michelle Bachelet attend a summit of European Union and Latin American leaders in Peru.

Chavez warned on Thursday he was reviewing ties and trade with Colombia in the wake of the Interpol report.

Around 3,000 people were killed or disappeared during Pinochet's dictatorship, according to government records, while another 28,000 were tortured and about 200,000 fled into exile.

"The President of the Republic (of Chile) would never have appointed ... someone who had participated in an operation that involved such a brutal violation of human rights," government spokesman Francisco Vidal told foreign correspondents.

"To have joined a military or police institution in Chile during that period does not make him responsible."