The U.S. Embassy has told a French judge probing the 1970s disappearance of French nationals in Chile that it does not want him to question former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Judge Roger Le Loire has asked Kissinger to testify on the alleged part played by the United States in the murder of opposition figures in Chile during the rightist rule of General Augusto Pinochet, who took power in a 1973 coup. A summons was delivered to Kissinger Monday while he was paying a private visit to France. However, the former U.S. foreign policy chief has since traveled to Italy without seeing the judge, leaving it to the U.S. Embassy in Paris to explain his position. According to a French judicial source, the embassy told the judge in a letter that Kissinger had other obligations and that the information requested by the judge was confidential. The letter, signed by an embassy official, suggested the judge should address an official request for information to President Bush’s administration. The French justice source said a request had been sent to Washington in 1999 during the Democratic administration of President Bill Clinton, but no answer had been received. The source added the judge had a State Department document dated August 23, 1976, that suggested the U.S. administration knew about Condor, a plan agreed by Chile and other South American regimes to assassinate opposition figures. Kissinger became national security adviser under President Richard Nixon in 1969 and was secretary of state from 1973 to 1977 under Presidents Nixon and Gerald Ford.