Interior ministry undersecretary Guillermo Pickering admitted "precedents for pro-violence factions re-grouping" exist, without stating which groups.

La Tercera newspaper said on Monday that the Chilean right-wing organisation Fatherland and Freedom (Patria Y Libertad) was getting ready to demonstrate outside the British and Spanish embassies and attack British and Spanish businesses.

A Banco Santander office in Coquimbo, northern Chile, was the target of an fire-bomb planted by Patria Y Libertad last Friday -- the day British judge Ronald Bartle announced Pinochet's extradition to Spain, to account for crimes perpetrated during his 1973-1990 regime.

Proceedings also began here Monday for the extradition to Italy of Manuel Contreras, the former head of Chile's DINA -- Pinochet's secret police.

GeneralContreras is to answer charges surrounding the October 1975 attack in Rome on former Chilean vice-President Bernardo Leighton, who was seriously injured along with his wife.

A Rome tribunal sentenced Contreras in his absence to 20 years in prison in June 1995. The previous month, he was given a seven-year jail term in Chile for ordering the 1976 murder in Washington of Orlando Letelier, a minister in the deposed Salvador Allende government.

Chilean Supreme Court President Roberto Davila said last Friday under normal circumstances the subject of an extradition order had to serve all of the current sentence before extradition could take place.

Contreras is being held at the Punta Peuco high security jail, 40 km North of Santiago. He said during his trial in Chile that General Pinochet was informed of all action taken by the DINA against opponents of the military regime.