Austria’s Chancellor Urges Voters to Reject Waldheim for Presidency

Austria’s chancellor and his senior ministers Friday implored voters to reject Kurt Waldheim as president in Sunday’s election for the sake of the nation’s reputation.

But Waldheim’s supporters said Austrians should vote for him out of a patriotic duty.

With Waldheim beset by allegations that he hid a Nazi past and was involved in war crimes as an intelligence lieutenant in the German army, Chancellor Fred Sinowatz said true patriots must choose a president who would be good for Austria at home and abroad.

Sinowatz’s Socialist Party supports former Health Minister Kurt Steyrer over the former U.N. secretary general.

Waldheim has denied ever belonging to a Nazi group and said he bears no responsibility for wartime atrocities. He accuses his political opponents of waging a “smear campaign” against him.

Waldheim Diary Disclosed

But Thursday, an American researcher disclosed a document from the U.S. National Archives that shows Waldheim entered orders from Hitler into a German army war diary that said partisans in Greece should be immediately executed and their relatives and associates sent to slave labor camps.

A spokesman at Waldheim’s campaign office said the report is an attempt to add punch to the anti-Waldheim campaign just before the election.

“Waldheim has never denied he knew that atrocities were committed in the Balkan war,” he said.

The conservative opposition People’s Party, which is backing Waldheim, rejected attacks on him by the World Jewish Congress in New York as “foreign meddling” and urged people to vote for Waldheim as a “patriotic duty.”

Angered by Kohl Backing

But Socialist opponents of Waldheim were angered by an endorsement of him by West Germany’s Chancellor Helmut Kohl.