About 100 people gathered in Geneva on Friday to protest Henry Kissinger’s appearance at the annual meeting of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The demonstrators, most of them from Chile, described the former US secretary of state as an “assassin”.

They were criticising Kissinger for his alleged role in the Chilean military coup of 1973, when General Augusto Pinochet overthrew the government of President Salvador Allende.

Kissinger, now 87, was in Geneva to deliver a keynote speech on power shifts and security.

He said that Afghanistan’s neighbours needed to get more involved in finding solutions to the conflict there.

Kissinger also said that nuclear diplomacy with North Korea and Iran had produced no significant results.