Word: waldheim
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When Kurt Waldheim was inaugurated last week as Austria's sixth President since 1945, the protests were few and symbolic. In the sunlit Great Hall of the Parliament building, some two dozen Socialist Members of Parliament wore black neckties. Many Socialists believe that Waldheim, who served in a German army command responsible for the deportation of Greek Jews to death camps during World War II, is unfit to be President...
Absent from the ceremony were the Israeli, Yugoslav and U.S. ambassadors. Israel withdrew its ambassador when Waldheim was elected. U.S. Ambassador Ronald Lauder was attending his mother's birthday party in Paris...
During his inaugural speech Waldheim decried the "horror of the Holocaust," but such regrets could not silence groups of American and Austrian protesters...
...Socialists treated the controversy gingerly. Only recently did Steyrer begin to allude openly to the damage a Waldheim victory could inflict on the country's reputation. WITH STEYRER, ALL OF AUSTRIA WINS proclaimed one campaign poster. Bruno Kreisky, the Socialist ex-Chancellor, last week appealed to his countrymen not to vote for Waldheim. Asked Kreisky: "Didn't we always have decent Presidents whom we could show in public...
...Waldheim's victory is unlikely to restore his credibility abroad. Indeed, new allegations about the President-elect's shadowy war record continued to pile up last week. A former Yugoslav intelligence officer claimed that after the war he passed along the names of 30 alleged Austrian war criminals to the Soviets as possible agents. Waldheim's name, he said, was on that list. In Washington, debate continued over whether to place Waldheim on a Nazi war- crimes watch list that bars those named from entering the U.S. As head of state, Waldheim will almost certainly be allowed to visit under...