Austria to Ask U.S. to Lift Waldheim Ban
The Austrian Foreign Ministry is renewing efforts to persuade Washington to lift its ban on President Kurt Waldheim traveling to the United States, a ministry official said Friday.
The official said, “There is a plan to hand President Bush a letter through Ambassador Friedrich Hoess in which the new Administration is once more given the Austrian viewpoint on this topic.”
The ban was imposed during former President Ronald Reagan’s second term in office.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the letter does not contain new arguments. It is to be delivered in the next few days, the official said.
The United States barred Waldheim from the country on April 27, 1987, after the World Jewish Congress said it had evidence that implicated the former U.N. secretary general in war crimes during World War II.
The U.S. Justice Department said in December, 1987, that it had evidence of Waldheim’s complicity while he served as a junior officer in the German army in Yugoslavia.
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