Justice for all: if the U.S. wants human rights, Henry Kissinger should face Latin American judges. (Trade Talk).

As a correspondent in Latin America for nearly two decades, I became accustomed to politicians and journalists taking former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's name in vain. But now this lack of respect is assuming formal and more threatening tones-and it's increasingly clear that they won't go away. Kissinger would like us to remember him as an elder statesman, but courts in Washington, Santiago, Buenos Aires, Paris and Madrid are threatening that image with gritty accusations of complicity in clandestine killings from Santiago to Asuncion.

Kissinger abruptly left Paris last year rather than answer a summons to appear before a French judge seeking information on the disappearances of five French citizens in Chile under the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. He has also refused to reply to questions sent to him by a Chilean judge investigating the 1973 death of U.S. journalist Charles Horman who, according to the award-winning 1982 movie Missing, uncovered the U.S. military's role in the 1973 coup that put Pinochet to power.

The U.S. government's release of classified documents shows Kissinger was closely informed about Operation Condor, the conspiracy under which secret police forces in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay collaborated in hunting down, torturing and killing political opponents. The papers also show that Kissinger helped instigate the coup that toppled Chilean President Salvador Allende, ushering in Pinochet's 17-year regime.

As head of the committee that ran U.S. covert operations, Kissinger also was the chief architect of programs to destabilize governments that he and U.S. President Richard Nixon didn't like--an attitude with unfortunate echoes in the current Bush administration's smirking reaction to the recent failed coup in Venezuela.

Kissinger says the United States did not approve or support repression unleashed in Chile and elsewhere. He thinks the U.S. State Department should answer for him. Meanwhile, the Bush administration has scoffed at efforts to formalize war crimes tribunals, rejecting membership in a global human rights court. When Chile's Supreme Court in March authorized sending Kissinger 17 questions about Horman, a Bush official called the request "unjust and ridiculous:'

Kissinger should give a full accounting of what happened. It is a travesty that Horman's widow and other relatives of military victims are still-more than a quarter century later--trying to find out what happened to their loved ones.

End of impunity. Many former Latin American heads of state and their senior officials are called to account for past human rights abuses; Kissinger should join their ranks. But the former diplomat so far refuses to cooperate. Instead, he has attacked the law of universal jurisdiction--the concept that a country can prosecute those accused of crimes against humanity even if they are not citizens of that state and their crimes were committed elsewhere--as "judicial tyranny." Not surprisingly, he was critical of Britain's 1998 detention of Pinochet.

Slobodan Milosevic's ongoing trial at The Hague shows that the era of impunity is ending. In his refusal to cooperate with foreign courts, Kissinger lives in virtual house arrest in the United States, much like Pinochet, who sits in his coastal retreat in Chile, a shadow of his former self. Taking note of Pinochet's detention in Britain, Kissinger realizes he could be subject to extradition if he travels to Europe. Early this year, the former secretary of state canceled plans to visit Sao Paulo after learning that human rights groups planned protests against his support of past military regimes.

No administration is without mistakes, Kissinger said at an April business convention. "The issue is whether, 30 years after the event, courts are the appropriate means by which determination is made."

The answer is yes, Mr. Kissinger. A resounding yes.