PINOCHET

SANTIAGO, Chile (Reuters):

Doctors said former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was well on the road to recovery yesterday after a weekend heart attack that his family said nearly killed the long-ailing 91-year-old.

"Today, he's going to get out of bed and do some physical therapy in the hospital," Dr. Juan Ignacio Vergara said outside the Santiago military hospital where Pinochet is being treated. "The general is in a good state of health. He's well, conscious, talking and he's eating."

Pinochet, accused of murder and torture during his dictatorial rule of Chile from 1973 to 1990, underwent an emergency angioplasty early on Sunday to reopen blocked arteries. Vergara said he would remain in the hospital for at least 10 days.

Marco Antonio Pinochet, the retired general's youngest son, said his father, best known as the strongmen who ruled much of South America in the 1970s and '80s, had been on the brink of death in the moments after the heart attack.

Sceptism

Responding to scepticism over his father's illness, Marco Antonio said, "if he had arrived (at the hospital) five minutes later, the doctor tells me, he would have died."

Many Chileans from the political left have accused the former dictator of faking ill health to avoid prosecution for human rights abuses and fraud.

Pinochet still evokes strong emotions among Chileans even though he is no longer relevant on the political scene, which has been dominated for 16 years by centre-left former exiles from his regime.