Word: kirchschlã
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Speaking before television cameras in Vienna's ornate Hofburg Palace, Austrian President Rudolf Kirchschl??ger was at pains to select his words carefully. His aim: to render a balanced judgment for his 7 million countrymen about accusations that Presidential Candidate Kurt Waldheim, the former United Nations Secretary-General, had knowingly falsified his World War II record and was involved in Nazi atrocities...
...Kirchschl??ger, who was once a judge, had closeted himself for ten days with more than 500 pages of documents from the U.N., the Yugoslav government and the World Jewish Congress that detailed Waldheim's activities as a lieutenant in the German army from 1942 to 1945. The first published reports about Waldheim's military service had shattered his pretense that he had been mustered out of the army after being wounded in 1941. Faced with evidence to the contrary, he has since admitted returning to active service as an army interpreter in Greece and Yugoslavia. Nonetheless, he maintains that...
Waldheim, Kirchschl??ger declared last week, must have known about the brutal reprisals taken against the partisans by his army unit. But while the President mentioned a 1948 recommendation by the War Crimes Commission that Waldheim be prosecuted for his actions, he added, "I would not dare to file an indictment in a regular court. Do not expect & verdict from...
Coming just eleven days before the May 4 presidential election, Kirchschl??ger's cautious assessment did little to clarify matters for the 20% of Austrian voters who, according to private polls, are still undecided about the Waldheim affair. Both Waldheim, the standard-bearer of the conservative People's Party, and Socialist Candidate Kurt Steyrer, a onetime Health Minister, insist that the former U.N. chiefs wartime record should not be an election issue. In fact, the controversy has rallied support for Waldheim. Before the March disclosures that he had misrepresented his wartime service, most polls showed him trailing Steyrer...
Even if he wins the presidency, Waldheim's past may continue to haunt him. West German President Richard von Weizsäcker recently moved up an official visit to Austria so he could be received by Kirchschl??ger rather than risk having Waldheim as his host. U.N. officials who served under him have reportedly said that the former Secretary-General was regarded as a blatant opportunist rather than a dedicated diplomat. That is hardly the image Waldheim tried to project at the beginning of the campaign, when he was portrayed as "A Man the World Trusts." In recent weeks, however...