Assassination of colonel investigated in Chile

Chilean President Augusto Pinochet Ugarte has ordered a full-scale probe into Tuesday's ambush killing of Lt. Col. Roger Vergara Campos, director of the Chilean Army's intelligence school. The assassination marks the first attack on a top Army officer by leftist urban guerrillas since the military came to power in a brutal coup d'etat in September 1973, Monitor Latin America correspondent James Nelson Goodsell reports. Santiago sources assume that remnants of the once-powerful leftist Movimiento Izquierdista Revolucionario were responsible for the killing.

General Pinochet, in announcing the hunt for Colonel Campos's assassins, warned that Chile still faces the threat of subversive violence and therefore is not ready for a return to democracy. The assassination came just four days after General Pinochet announced he is studying the text of a new constitution that would keep him in power for five more years.