Far-Right Bid for Austria Coalition Spurs Concern

Defying growing alarm among European and other foreign governments, Austria’s far-right Freedom Party moved closer Saturday to joining a coalition government that the party’s leader pledged would cut immigration almost to zero.

Joerg Haider, a charismatic politician who once praised Nazi Germany’s “orderly employment policy,” said on state radio that he has already won agreement with the conservative People’s Party to tighten visa controls.

If the two parties form a governing coalition--a development expected as early as this week--it will introduce a quota system “that is tantamount to a de facto zero immigration,” Haider said.

Following Switzerland’s example, Austria would let in foreign workers mainly to help out during the busy tourist season, he said. Once tourists had moved on, and the seasonal workers had served their purpose, they too would have to leave Austria under the immigration policy Haider described. The most visible foreign migrants in Austria now are from such regions as the Balkans and Turkey.

Calling his immigration proposal an “objectively justified solution that is not open to attack internationally,” Haider warned in a separate interview: “Foreign governments should not meddle in Austria’s internal affairs.”

Austria’s three main political parties have been struggling to form a stable government since elections Oct. 3, when voters denied incumbent Chancellor Viktor Klima’s Social Democrats a majority. Haider’s party came in second, slightly ahead of the People’s Party. The Social Democrats’ attempt at a coalition fell apart this month.

Haider plans to continue as governor of his home province, Carinthia, but if People’s Party head Wolfgang Schuessel agrees to join members of Haider’s party in a national Cabinet, it will present the European Union with a crisis of conscience.

Austria is a member of the 15-member union, which was founded on a commitment to a common standard in areas such as human rights. A dramatic victory for the far right in Austria could embolden similar political movements elsewhere in Europe just when the continent is trying to bury the 20th century ghosts of rabid nationalism.

“The European Union is not only a single market or a single currency,” Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres, whose country currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, said in a statement Friday. “It is also a union based on a set of values and rules and on a common civilization.”

Haider has more than tripled his party’s popularity over 13 years with a populist mix of smooth talking, rugged good looks and a sense of how to play to Austrian xenophobia without sounding crudely racist.

In November, he was accused of stirring up fears of foreigners in Carinthia province when he said tuberculosis tests should be carried out at all schools, especially those with many immigrant students, to prevent an epidemic.

Austria’s left-leaning Greens party called Haider a racist, and national figures showed that the number of tuberculosis cases had actually dropped over recent years.

To his many critics, Haider is a modern demagogue, and coming from the country of Adolf Hitler’s birth, Haider’s words have a particularly grave resonance in the rest of Europe.

“Haider’s party is inspired by an ideology opposed to the humanistic values and respect for human dignity on which the European Union was founded,” Catherine Colanna, spokeswoman for French President Jacques Chirac, said in Paris on Saturday.

Austrian President Thomas Klestil of the People’s Party plans to meet as early as Monday with Haider and Schuessel, who is also Austria’s foreign minister, to decide whether their two parties should be allowed to form a coalition government.

The constitution also gives Klestil the option of calling new elections, but recent polls have suggested that Haider’s popularity is rising in Austria and that his party could make an even better showing if outside pressure backfired by provoking resentment toward what many Austrians see as foreign interference.

In his characteristic style, Haider laughed off the mounting dismay by throwing a party Saturday--complete with fireworks.

He flew by private helicopter to the village of Gerlitzen, in the Austrian Alps, where he celebrated his 50th birthday with some skiing, an air show and a 165-foot-long apple strudel, Austria’s national wire service reported.

But the European Union expressed “deep concern” as Haider’s party reported quick progress in negotiations to form a government, and Chirac was among European leaders pressing for a tough response.

Guterres spent Saturday contacting leaders of member countries, and Chirac pressed for coordinated action if Haider’s party is allowed into government, Chirac’s spokeswoman said.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has threatened to pull his country’s ambassador out of Vienna in protest if Haider’s party gets a share of power.

Barak, in a statement, has also called for “a united international front before the Austrian regime to warn it of the consequences of such a situation.”

Haider has apologized for remarks widely interpreted as praise for Hitler and his Third Reich, such as when he called veterans of Hitler’s SS storm troopers “decent people of good character.”

More recently, he has tried to make it clear that he views Hitler as a terrible dictator. As protesters marched against his party in Vienna last November, Haider apologized for hurting the feelings of Jews with “misleading statements.”

If the Freedom Party joined the government, “no one need pack their bags,” he said at the time. “No one need leave their homeland.”

Haider insists that he and his party stand for good government, not racism, and he sees the growing foreign criticism as part of a continuing effort to demonize the Freedom Party.

“It is logical that the European establishment, which has so far only known Social Democrats and a few conservatives, should be a bit nervous, but they’ll get used to us,” he has said.