CHILE’S General Augusto Pinochet has long been one of my great modern heroes. I have, accordingly, watched with considerable scorn the attempts by two socialist Spanish judges, acting on the initiative of the Spanish Communist Party, to have this remarkable man extradited from Britain to stand trial in Spain on charges of "genocide" and "crimes against humanity."

Particularly despicable in all this has been the shabby stratagems of Tony Blair’s New Labour government, which immediately and eagerly sought to cooperate with what, judicially, would have amounted to an act of diplomatic kidnapping. If this is an example of Blair’s new "ethical foreign policy," then it leaves much to be desired.

First, the Spanish warrant of arrest was served on a sedated Pinochet, recovering from spinal disc surgery, by Scotland Yard officers at midnight at the London Clinic. Then, blocked in their attempts at extradition by a British High Court ruling that as Pinochet had entered Britain on a diplomatic passport, he therefore enjoyed immunity from the English legal process, their next move was to have the 82-year old Chilean removed to a private psychiatric clinic and held there under police guard.

This to the only South American leader willing to assist Britain during the Falklands War! Perfidious Albion indeed. Adding insult to injury, the Cabinet Minister mainly involved in the decision to seize Pinochet for extradition was none other than Home Secretary Jack Straw. It is worth recalling that, as a Marxist student organiser in the early 1970s, Straw was responsible for organising anti-Pinochet demos in London. How gratified he must have been at this turnround.

Certain facets of this whole drama have received almost no attention in the Western media:

**While Pinochet was being hounded on charges of alleged genocide and human rights abuses, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, whose oppressive regime has tortured and killed far more than the 3 000/4 000 who died or disappeared in Chile during Pinochet’s years in power, is a frequent and honoured guest in Spain.

**Tony Blair recently made a highly publicised visit to Beijing. What about trying to serve warrants for arrest and extradition on the Red Chinese leaders for the Tiananen Square massacre and countless human rights abuses in Tibet?

**What kind of justice is it that those who oppose communist terrorism are targeted, while Marxist mass murders are left entirely unmolested? But Castro is respectfully reported in the Irish Times as saying: "I would be happy if they put Pinochet on trial."

**The Spanish judges based their claim for extradition on the grounds that certain Spanish civilians were killed or disappeared in Pinochet’s 1973 military coup. Why was it not pointed out that any Spaniard or other Westerner killed in Chile at that time was most likely a member of the revolutionary bands fighting to establish a second communist outpost in Latin America?

No matter how Marxists may hate or revile him, the fact remains that Pinochet is one of Latin America’s most significant personalities of this century, regarded by most Chileans as a national saviour, as the man who rescued their country from a totalitarian takeover, who saved Chile from becoming a second Vietnam, who transformed the country from ruin to the region’s foremost economic dynamo.

His main crime was that he overthrew the "elected socialist government" of Salvador Allende: "the popular Marxist government" as the Johannesburg Star has it. That, naturally, is something no Marxist can forgive or forget. Further, that "elected" statement is misleading.

In Chile’s 1970 general election, the combined anti-socialist vote stood at 62%, against Allende’s 36,2%. But, as is so often the case with conservatives, the anti-socialist bloc was furiously divided. With none of the presidential candidates able to achieve a majority, Chile’s democratically elected Chamber of Deputies finally chose Allende as president, but this only after extracting a promise from him that he would respect Chile’s Constitution.

On those figures Allende, projected ever since as a "benign social reformer," had a mandate for nothing. Wisdom dictated that he tread carefully, concentrate simply on good housekeeping. But Allende was weak, with a great number of Marxist wild men behind him. Once in power his administration embarked on a series of measures neither foreshadowed in his manifesto nor compatible with the Chilean Constitution.