SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) -- Gen. Augusto Pinochet turned 88 on Tuesday amid uproar after calling himself an "angel" in a television interview he said would be his last ever.

Speaking with a Spanish-language television station in Miami on Monday, Pinochet said he saw no reason to ask forgiveness from victims or their relatives for human rights violations during his 1973-1990 dictatorship.

"They are the ones, the Marxists, who should ask me for forgiveness," the ailing general said in the interview, recalling a 1986 attempt on his life in which five of his bodyguards were killed.

"I never ordered anyone to be killed. First of all, I am a Catholic," he added.

"I harbor no hatred or rancor. I am good, I feel like an angel," he said. "I have kindness. Whenever I can do something to help someone, I do it. To help anyone."

Builders working on a project near the international airport, several kilometres outside Santiago, found the remains of Carlos Farina in June. A medical examination showed that he had been shot from behind 12 times�twice in the head, twice in the neck and eight times in the back.

Construction workers unearthed the corpse by accident, buried only 60 centimetres below ground level. Authorities had been searching for Farina in the capital's general cemetery. The Legal Medical Service confirmed this month that the remains were in fact that of the young boy. They also found an identification card, which belonged to one of his two friends who were detained and executed alongside Carlos.

According to a government commission held in 1991, Carlos was the youngest victim of Pinochet's regime. He is one of 80 minors who were killed and listed as �disappeared�.

Army and police personnel had detained the boy on October 13, 1973 during a violent raid in the Santiago working class suburb, La Pincoya. The late Josefina Oyorce Farina, the boy's mother, testified: �Two carabineer police, four military personnel and two civilian police burst through the house demanding that I hand over Carlos Patricio. I tried to hesitate, but they didn't take any notice. Two carabineers took Carlos out of his bed and one of them butted him in the chest, which caused him to fall to the ground.�

The boy was taken to a nearby football ground with dozens of other people from his neighbourhood. There the military selected who was to be executed and who was to be set free.

The tragic story of the Farina family, who after three decades located the body of their 13-year-old brother Carlos Farina�killed by the Chilean military in 1973�is a sharp reminder of the brutal crimes that the government of President Ricardo Lagos is seeking to have excused under a recently-signed accord with the military.

The accord, signed in July, is designed to fix a legal loophole that has allowed the courts to hear charges against former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and other high ranking officers for the �aggravated kidnapping� of some of the thousands of people who disappeared in the months and years following Pinochet's 1973 coup. Pinochet himself faces 169 such charges.

This is why I don't want to work in Latin America. Ever.

~Halcyondream~

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