World IN BRIEF : AUSTRIA : Ex-Officials Face Arms Sales Charges

Former Austrian Chancellor Fred Sinowatz and two other former ministers have been charged with complicity in illegal arms sales to Tehran during the Iran-Iraq war, the APA news agency said in Vienna. APA quoted Justice Minister Egmont Foregger as saying Sinowatz, former interior minister Karl Blecha and former foreign minister Leopold Gratz were charged with illegally allowing arms sales to a country at war but had so far not been accused of violating Austria’s neutrality laws. Several managers of the Noricum company, a subsidiary of Austria’s state-controlled industrial group Voest, are on trial on charges of selling $300 million worth of arms to Iran in 1985 and 1986.