Britain welcomed General Augusto Pinochet's violent 1973 coup in Chile and regarded his military officers as "decent professionals" who were "on our side," documents released yesterday showed.

　　While accepting that the coup leaders would crack down hard on their leftist opponents, London's ambassador to Chile said Pinochet was better for Britain than the Socialist government of President Salvador Allende.

　　"The current regime has infinitely more to offer British interests than the one which preceded it," ambassador Reginald Seconde wrote in a report on the coup three weeks after Pinochet seized power on September 11, 1973.

　　"The new leaders are unequivocally on our side and want to do business, in its widest sense with us."

　　The report is one of hundreds of papers relating to the Chilean coup released by Britain's national archive, the Public Records Office.

　　Intriguingly though, the government has decided to hold back files relating to the day of the coup itself. They could in theory cast light on the role Western governments - led by the United States - played in the overthrow of Allende.

　　More than 3,000 people were killed in the coup and its aftermath. Many were leftists who were tortured and whose bodies were dumped in the Pacific Ocean or in the Mapocho river in the Chilean capital Santiago.

　　Seconde tells his seniors in London that "it is unlikely that the military will hand back power to the politicians soon."

　　He was right. Chile had 17 years of dictatorship baefore Pinochet stepped down in 1990.

　　The British ambassador has mixed feelings about Allende, a democratically elected Marxist who killed himself on the day of the coup when the air force bombed his presidential palace.

　　He describes Allende as "thoroughly devious" as a politician.