Austria Blocks Report on Waldheim’s Moral Guilt : Panel Urged to Soften Its Conclusions

The Austrian Foreign Ministry today blocked the release of the report of a five-month investigation that accused President Kurt Waldheim of lying about his role in the deportation of civilians as a German army officer during World War II.

A six-member international commission of military historians said the ministry wanted their 200-page report to be revised before its delivery, scheduled today, to the former U.N. secretary general and to Chancellor Franz Vranitzky.

But the Foreign Ministry said that the historians overstepped their mandate and that the wording of their 200-page report on the former U.N. secretary general is unacceptable.

“The commission has concerned itself with moral and character judgments in a completely impermissible overstepping of its clear mandate and must be rejected as contentious and incorrect,” a ministry statement said.

Miffed at the 11th-hour stonewalling, the historians met to discuss rewording its conclusion, which says Waldheim knew about the deportations. They said the Foreign Ministry wanted a reference to Waldheim’s “moral guilt” and other statements in the summary deleted or softened.

The Foreign Ministry, supported by Waldheim, named the panel in August.

Barred From U.S.

Waldheim, who was a lieutenant, has said he was only a low-ranking translator in the German army stationed in the Balkans and had no role in the deportations. The United States last year barred Waldheim from entering the country because of his wartime record.

Waldheim’s press spokesman, Gerold Christian, said the Austrian leader will not resign the presidency, regardless of the findings in the report.

“He has asked himself, what is the good of this for the country, and the decision is that it is not a good time,” Christian said. “Not now with all the attention on him. He won’t resign no matter what the results of this report are.”

But other sources close to the president suggested that he might resign once the furor over the report has subsided.

In Bonn, the West German on the panel of historians investigating Waldheim’s World War II past has said that Waldheim knew his German army unit committed war crimes but that he did not participate in them, a newspaper reported today.

The Die Welt newspaper quoted Manfred Messerschmidt as saying the commission found that Waldheim could be considered an accomplice because he knew what was happening in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia from 1942 to 1944.

‘Critical Attitude’

Hans Rudolf Kurz, the chairman of the panel of historians, said the report will take a “critical attitude” toward Waldheim’s war record.

One reliable source close to the panel said, “Contrary to the worries of some of a whitewash, this report will be very, very interesting, one the president’s office will be not at all happy with.”

While the six-member panel failed to uncover any evidence directly linking Waldheim to war crimes, one panel source said the documents showed that “there is no question Waldheim concealed and even lied outright about his service.”

While Waldheim claims that he knew little about what his unit was doing, sources said the historians found a number of documents suggesting that he was well-informed.

“There is not one principal document, but a whole mosaic,” said Belgian commission member Jan Vanwelkenhuizen, who was collecting documents in Yugoslavia on Friday.

Vanwelkenhuizen claims that the documents prove that Waldheim knew and played a significant role in a German Wehrmacht campaign that resulted in the deportation of 60,000 Yugoslavs.