Cablegate: Chile Media Report - August 13

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TAGS: KMDR KPAO PGOV ECON PREL SNAR EFIN CI
SUBJECT: CHILE MEDIA REPORT - AUGUST 13

Lead Story
----------
1. Three different polls -- CERC, Imaginaccion, and Direct Media --
show that Sebastian Pinera is ahead in the presidential race in
either a first round or a runoff election with Concertacion
candidate Eduardo Frei and independent Marcos Enriquez-Ominami (El
Mercurio, conservative, influential, 8/13).

Honduras
--------
2. Foreign Minister Fernandez will meet in Washington with A/S
Thomas Shannon and OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza to
discuss Manuel Zelaya's return to office. Some of Fernandez'
counterparts in the region have told him that they believe that the
Obama administration has been too passive with the Micheletti
government. Fernandez will transmit that message to Washington (El
Mercurio, 8/13).

3. President Bachelet will receive President Zelaya today in La
Moneda. Zelaya will also meet with party presidents and the chairmen
of the foreign relations committees of the Senate and the Chamber of
Deputies. Foreign Minister Fernandez said that Chile has canceled
the accreditation of the Honduran ambassador who defended Micheletti
after the coup, Eduardo Martinez, as requested by President Zelaya
two weeks ago (El Mercurio, 8/13).

4. Foreign Minister Fernandez said Zelaya's visit to Chile, "falls
in the framework of the Chile's efforts to promote the restoration
of democracy in Honduras and of its constitutionally elected
president" (La Tercera, conservative, independent, 8/14).

5. Editorial on Honduras: "Chile must support democracy in Honduras
and its legitimate government, but it cannot disavow Zelaya's
responsibility in the events that have developed (in that country)"
(La Tercera, 8/13).

U.S.-Colombia agreement/Unasur
------------------------------
6. Unasur presidents, including Alaro Uribe, will meet in Argentina
on August 28 to discuss the Colombia-U.S. agreement in depth, said
Argentine news agency Telam (El Mercurio, 8/13).

Indigenous Mapuche Conflict
---------------------------
7. The owner of an estate in Angol called the Carabineros police to
evict a group of about 50 Mapuches armed with shotguns who had
seized a part of his land early morning. There was a shoot-out and
indigenous activist Jaime Collio was killed. Members of Collio's
community tried to stop the Forensic Service from lifting the body,
which resulted in a new clash. Collio is the third Mapuche to die in
clashes with the local authorities in six years (La Tercera, 8/13).

Science
-------
8. Chile has one of the most valuable skies, if someone were to
assess the value of skies worldwide. The reason is that US$2.5
billion will be invested by foreign companies to build several
telescopes over the next two years. There is the GMT, one of the
most modern telescopes in the world; the Atacama Large Millimeter
Array Telescope (ALMA), the Visible Infrared Survey Telescope for
Astronomy (VISTA), the VLT Survey Telescope, and the U.S. LSST Large
Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) that will have the largest
photographic camera in the world (El Mercurio, 8/13).
SIMONS

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