Pinochet will receive a funeral with military honours, but will not be honoured as a former head of state, a government spokesman said on Sunday.

"It has been determined that the deceased former general shall receive the honours of a former commander in chief of the Army," government spokesman Ricardo Lagos Weber said in a statement.

Pinochet's funeral arrangements presented a dilemma for Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, whose father died after being tortured in a Pinochet prison camp, because so many Chileans feel he was a criminal. Others felt he did great service to the country.

Bachelet and her mother went into exile after they were arrested and held in an infamous Pinochet-era torture centre.

The Army said that a Mass would be held today for Pinochet.

Allende: He should have stood trial

The daughter of Chile's late President Salvador Allende, who was ousted by Pinochet, said yesterday she was comforted by the fact the former dictator died pursued by the courts but wished he had been convicted.

"To the end he was surrounded by lawyers trying to defend the indefensible," Isabel Allende told national radio in Spain, following Pinochet's death.

Salvador Allende, a Socialist, shot himself during the military coup led by Pinochet in 1973.

Isabel Allende, a cousin of the well-known novelist of the same name, went into exile in Mexico after the coup but is now a member of Chile's parliament for the Socialist Party, which once again governs the country.

"I would have preferred that the courts finished their work, I wish there had been a ruling, I wish he had been condemned," Allende told television in Spain, which she is visiting.

"I think it would have been healthier in some way and it hurts me... because as a country, in the end... we didn't carry out final justice."

"At this moment my thoughts are with so many of our dead, certainly my father, but I think of all our people who were disappeared, tortured, murdered," Allende said.

Source: China Daily