Word: austrian
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...years that have passed since the last Soviet occupation forces left Austrian soil, that tiny gateway nation of Middle Europe had gained friends by being evenhanded to East and West and openhearted to anyone in trouble. When Hungarians fled the Russian repression of 1956, they were sheltered in Austria. When the "Prague Spring" ended in 1968, exiled Czechs came to Austria. Lately the troubled journeyers have been Soviet Jews en route to Israel, who used Vienna as a way station...
Last week, with a single decision, Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky had smudged his country's reputation and thrown it into an international whirl of protest. Until international attention was diverted by large scale fighting between Israel and Arab forces from Egypt and Syria, Kreisky's crisis had provided daily headlines around the world, focusing interest on the difficult question of how the rights of Jews and others can be protected against the schemes of terrorists. Kreisky's dramatic gesture came after three Russian Jews, on a train nearing Vienna and the Jewish Agency's layover facilities...
When the train, carrying 39 Soviet Jews among its 70 passengers, stopped at the Austrian border town of Marchegg, the Arabs struck. They pulled the guns out of their valises, wounded one person, and took five Jews and one customs official aboard the train as hostages...
...their prisoners managed to escape in the confusion. But when the train stopped at Vienna, the others were hustled aboard a Volkswagen bus owned by the Austrian railroad. With the captured customs officer at the wheel, the bus rushed to Schwechat airport on the outskirts of the city. The Austrians were so anxious to avoid bloodshed that police cars, alerted to what had happened, escorted the bus to the airport instead of trying to stop...
...terrorists identified themselves as "the Eagles of the Palestine Revolution." That sounded like yet another unknown guerrilla splinter group, but Middle East sources reported that the kidnapers were almost certainly members of the extremist Black September movement. At the airport, the terrorists demanded that Austrian officials produce a passenger plane to carry the remaining Jewish hostages - two men and a woman - to an unspecified destination in the Arab world. But Austrian officials, after consulting with Chancellor Bruno Kreisky, closed the airport and stubbornly refused to let the kidnapers and their hostages leave...