DIRECT CP VIOLATION IN KAPPA(L)-]PI(0) E+E- BEYOND LEADING LOGARITHMS

We analyze the direct CP violation in the rare decay K(L) --> pi0e+e- with QCD effects taken into account consistently in the next-to-leading order. We calculate the two-loop mixing between the four-quark DELTAS = 1 operators and the operator Q7V = (sdBAR)V-A(eeBAR)V in the NDR and HV renormalization schemes. Using the known two-loop anomalous dimension matrix of the four-quark operators, we find that the coefficient C7V(mu) depends only very weakly on mu, renormalization scheme and LAMBDA(MS)BAR. The next-to-leading QCD corrections enhance the direct CP violating contribution over its leading order estimate so that it remains dominant in spite of the recent decrease of \V(ub)\V(cb)\ and \V(cb)\. We expect typically BR(K(L) --> pi0e+e-)dir almost-equal-to 6 x 10(12), although values as high as 10(-11) are not yet excluded.