Far-Right Party Imperils Relations, EU Warns Austria

The European Union threatened Monday to cut high-level ties with Austria if the far-right Freedom Party gets a share of national power here, and party leader Joerg Haider struck back at what he called “political hotheadedness.”

Speaking on state-run television after the EU threat, Haider said he found it “problematic” that unnamed foreigners were trying to influence Austrian politics.

If his party isn’t allowed seats in a center-right coalition government, which would be led by the conservative People’s Party, “then we can forget about democracy in this country immediately,” he warned.

Since the members of the proposed coalition government hadn’t been announced, foreign governments were making “rash decisions that the [Austrian] government should not start to exist,” Haider said. “This is going to provoke, in many Austrians, a massive disappointment with its partners in the EU.”

While some of the union’s other 14 members argued for recalling their ambassadors from Vienna, the organization threatened to downgrade its diplomatic ties with Austria to merely “technical” contacts.

Earlier Monday, after meeting with President Thomas Klestil to make a case for giving the Freedom Party a share of power, Haider pulled in his horns for a moment by apologizing for remarks he had made over the weekend.

As French President Jacques Chirac led the call for tough measures to keep Haider’s party out of Austria’s government, Haider had called Chirac a “megalomaniac” who “doesn’t know what he is talking about.” When Belgium joined the French effort, Haider said the country was “corrupt.”

“For my part, I withdraw and regret what I said,” Haider declared. “I want no conflict with France and Belgium.”

Haider’s opponents see him as a racist demagogue who has tried to minimize the crimes committed by Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich.

Although he has apologized over the years for several comments considered too soft on the Nazis, he is still stridently anti-immigrant and strongly opposes expansion of the European Union. Many Austrians fear a flood of cheap immigrant labor as the union expands eastward into the former Soviet bloc.

Although Haider himself plans to carry on as governor of Austria’s Carinthia province, the prospect that members of his far-right party might be part of the government of a European Union state has dismayed leaders of other EU nations partly because they are trying to isolate extremists in their own countries.

Haider and the man who it is expected would lead a center-right coalition, People’s Party head Wolfgang Schuessel, gave no hint Monday that either of them would back down as a consequence of the EU threat.

Haider has tried to paint himself as a victim of foreign prejudice, and Schuessel, a centrist who supports a larger European Union, has argued that he could moderate the Freedom Party members of any coalition government.

“I find it surprising that the 14 member states of the European Union have come to such a decision without consulting Austria--a member state itself,” Schuessel, who is also Austria’s foreign minister, told a news conference. “Austria is not a country in need of a lesson in democracy.”

Klestil, Austria’s president, must decide whether to approve the center-right coalition, call new elections or give Social Democratic Chancellor Viktor Klima another chance to form a government. He is set to meet with Klima and Schuessel today.

For almost four months, European governments were relatively quiet about the possible consequences if Haider’s party joined the national government, apparently in the hope that Klima would make sure that did not happen.

But just days after Klima managed to negotiate a coalition government with his longtime allies in the People’s Party on Jan. 19, the deal collapsed, and Klima abandoned his effort to hold on to power.

Schuessel then opened negotiations with Haider to form a coalition government. And European governments, led by France, suddenly began to warn Austria that it risked isolating itself if members of the far right took seats in the Cabinet.

On Monday, Portuguese Foreign Minister Jaime Gama, acting head of the Council of the European Union, cautioned Austria against making a “historic error” after meeting with his German counterpart, Joschka Fischer.

Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres, whose country currently holds the European Union’s rotating presidency, echoed Chirac in promising European Union action if the far right joins a coalition government.

“If a party which has a xenophobic platform and does not respect the core values of the European family gains power, we cannot have the same relations as in the past,” Guterres said.