Waldheim Says He Will Fight Anti-Semitism

President-elect Kurt Waldheim, declaring that he is “neither a Nazi nor a war criminal,” said Wednesday that he would support an international inquiry into his World War II record and vowed to “fight anti-Semitism wherever it appears.”

“I have nothing to hide,” Waldheim said at a news conference, his first since his election on Sunday in the runoff round of a bitter campaign that was dominated by charges that he participated in Nazi war crimes.

However, Waldheim--who stressed that he always supported the existence of Israel--said he also believes that his support in the United Nations for Palestinian rights may have been the reason for what he termed the “slanderous campaign” by the World Jewish Congress and other groups aimed at linking him to atrocities in Greece and Yugoslavia as an officer of the Wehrmacht, the Nazi army.

“I have no other explanation for the fact that all the charges came up 40 years after World War II, and after I have been carefully checked during my two terms as U.N. secretary general,” he said.

Waldheim denied assertions that campaign appeals to latent anti-Semitic feelings of some Austrians had helped his candidacy.

“I will fight anti-Semitism wherever it appears, not for opportunistic reasons but as my own inner convictions,” he said Wednesday. “I shall make particular efforts to open up the dialogue, especially with our Jewish citizens, and shall make every attempt to counteract all forms of religious, racial and ethnic discrimination.”

Waldheim’s wife, Elisabeth, acknowledged Wednesday that she was once a Nazi party member. She said belonged to the Bund Deutscher Maedchen (German Young Women’s Union), a Nazi-affiliated group and was also a member of the National Socialist Party, which she said she left at Waldheim’s request when they became engaged.

Elisabeth Waldheim made the disclosure to the Austrian national news agency APA after the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published a story about her Nazi membership. She said she became a party member at age 18 and left the party three years later.

In another Austrian development Wednesday, the spokesman for the new Socialist chancellor, Franz Vranitzky, said that for protocol reasons, Vranitzky will not make a trip to the United States next week that had been planned for his predecessor, Fred Sinowatz.

The spokesman said that a new date for a visit for Vranitzky will be arranged through diplomatic channels.