A Chilean court lifted former dictator Augusto Pinochet's immunity from prosecution for fraud, but vacated human rights charges for his role in a crackdown conspiracy of South American dictatorships.

Chile's internal tax service filed the corruption charges after a US Senate probe uncovered accounts Pinochet opened in US banks under assumed names and totaling millions of dollars.

Appeals court judges voted 21-4 to strip Pinochet of immunity accorded him as a former head of state, to stand trial for tax fraud. Pinochet's defense still can appeal the ruling to Chile's Supreme Court.

The judge in charge of the financial fraud case, Sergio Munoz, has estimated the assets of Pinochet, then a general, and his wife, Lucia Hiriart, at 15.9 million dollars.

Pinochet had 125 secret holdings in cash, stocks and bonds in the United States, allowing him to move at least 13 million dollars, the US Senate reported March 15.

A year ago, the US Senate revealed that Pinochet had accounts at Riggs Bank in Washington, which may have held as much as eight million dollars.

The corruption charges may be more damaging to Pinochet's image than the human rights charges, because his supporters contend that he was a selfless soldier defending the country against socialism.

Pinochet also won a round on Tuesday, as a three-judge panel of the appeals court voted unanimously to vacate charges against him stemming from Operation Condor, a conspiracy of 1970s South American dictatorships to track opponents, murder them and spirit their bodies to other countries then under military regimes: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Chilean law requires a request for immunity to be lifted for each case as it is filed.

The former general, a symbol of Cold War repression who drove a deep political rift through this Andean nation, has never been tried for murders and abductions under his regime, some 3,000 by official count.

"The judges cannot let Pinochet be a thief, but they do not mind if he is a murderer," lawyer for the families of Pinochet's alleged victims Eduardo Contreras said.

Pinochet seized power after a 1973 coup, which toppled elected Socialist president Salvador Allende. He ruled until 1990.

A court had released Pinochet on bail after he was charged at the start of the year in the disappearance of political opponents during his military regime.

A commission investigating torture of political prisoners during Pinochet's military dictatorship delivered a report including the cases of 87 children 12 years and younger, some of whom were tortured, President Ricardo Lagos announced last week.

Most of the children had been jailed with their parents and some of them reported having been tortured, according to the report. Their identities were to have been kept secret for another 50 years.

The commission delivered a preliminary report in November, after the testimony of 28,000 prisoners who said they had been tortured. The commission left out 7,000 more cases for which it said there was insufficient evidence.

The court will also allow Pinochet to stand trial for using falsified passports and other documents and for opening secret accounts to evade Spanish court vigilance when he was detained in London in 1998 on human rights charges on a Spanish warrant.

Relatives of some 3,000 people known to have been abducted and presumed killed during Pinochet's regime also have filed suit for damages.

PHOTO CAPTION

Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet is shown in this March 10, 1998 file photo. (AP)