October 19, 2010

Sebastian Piñera visits Cabinet War Rooms ahead of appointments today with David Cameron and the Queen

By Martin Hickman

THE INDEPENDENT, Monday, 18 October 2010 – Basking in the glory of the miners’ rescue, Chile’s President, Sebastian Piñera, started a state visit to Britain yesterday with a tour of Sir Winston Churchill’s underground, Second World War headquarters.

Churchill War Rooms

In the Churchill War Rooms in Whitehall, London, where the prime minister orchestrated the war effort and rallied the public during the Blitz, Mr Piñera refrained from uttering the words “blood, toil, tears and sweat” from his boyhood hero’s 1940 speech, which he had kept at his side during the miners’ ordeal.

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Instead, he sat in Churchill’s wooden chair and pulled from a suit pocket a small hessian sack containing a lump of rock taken from the San Jose mine, from which 33 miners were freed last week after 69 days below ground. He also offered as a gift to the War Rooms’ director, Phil Reed, a facsimile of the first, red-lettered note from Los 33 saying “Estamos Bien en el refugio, los 33” (“We are doing well in our refuge, the 33.”)

Overseen by Mr Piñera in a 22-hour operation, at the end of which he hugged every miner as they emerged from the emergency chute bored 622 metres under the Atacama desert, the extraordinary rescue has lifted his poll ratings and Chile’s international standing, providing the ideal springboard for his long-planned tour of Europe

A billionaire businessman, the Harvard-educated economist is hoping that his visit will underline Chile’s transition from an insular dictatorship to a democratic economic power – and attract inward investment. He is also hoping to banish any lingering memories of Augusto Pinochet, the last Chilean head of state to make headlines in the UK during his arrest 12 years ago for murdering civilians during the 1970s.

 Read the entire article here at The Independent

 ©THE INDEPENDENT

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