Sarajevo - The Sarajevo-based International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) is to help Chilean authorities identify victims of disappearances during the 1970s, the commission said in a statement Monday.

The commission on Sunday signed an agreement with the Chilean government on technical assistance to identify more than 3,000 people who are believed to have disappeared in Chile following the 1973 coup.

The commission also confirmed that the first 43 bone samples and 73 reference samples have arrived at ICMP's laboratories in Sarajevo for testing.

The bone samples delivered came from a burial site at Calama, a desert region in northern Chile, the statement said.

"This is very important agreement for us. ICMP has opened a real opportunity for us to achieve justice in our cases," said Dr. Gloria Ramirez-Donoso of the Human Rights Programme of the Chilean Justice Ministry's Legal Medical Services.

ICMP's agreement with the Chilean government follows its involvement in the specially-constituted panel of international experts that was formed to advise the Chilean Presidential Commission on forensic issues relating to the disappearances during the 1970s.

Since it was established in 1996 to help identify people missing after years of conflicts in former Yugoslavia, the ICMP has developed highly sophisticated DNA-led identification system, which compares DNA profiles from the victims' hard tissue samples, such as bones and teeth, and blood or saliva from the living relatives.

Apart from helping find and identify people missing from a decade of conflicts in the Balkans, the ICMP was also involved in identifying the victims of the 2001 terrorist attack in New York, the 2004 Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, as well as victims of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. (dpa)